On Friday (September 20), the National Labor Relations Board proposed a rule stating that graduate students at private universities are not employees and cannot form unions. The proposal follows years of back-and-forth decisions on the status of graduate students’ ability to unionize. It is unclear how the new rule would affect ongoing unionization efforts; Inside Higher Ed reports that current contracts would not be affected by the rule until they expire.
In 2000, the board ruled that students at New York University could unionize, but it overturned this decision in a 2004 Brown University case. This was then reversed in 2016, when it determined that graduate and undergraduate students at Columbia University were considered employees and had the right to unionize, reports Science.
After the 2016 Columbia decision, students at 12 other universities voted in favor of forming unions, with varying degrees of success. For example, although graduate students at ...
