Govt: No grad student unions

As teaching and research assistants from across North America gathered this weekend (July 22–25) for the annual meeting of the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, the recent US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling earlier this month against students working at Brown University was a hot topic.Attendee Maris Zivarts, a graduate student in biology at Yale and a member of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization—which also seeks to be recognized as a union—told The Scientist that delegates "overwhelmingly" voted to pass a resolution to use "all possible avenues" to reverse the decision and extend the benefits of unionization to graduate students.He added that many graduate students also formed a picket line on Friday outside the New York offices of the NLRB to protest the decision. "There were a couple hundred graduate students walking in the rain," he said.The decision, which applies to all private universities, reversed the NLRB's decision 4 years ago under the Clinton administration that let graduate assistants at New York University unionize. This time, the board ruled that graduate assistants are students, not employees, which prevents them from organizing.Mark Nickel, director of the news service at Brown, said that the university has made the same argument over the years, and "we're pleased that the NLRB found it persuasive." Nickel noted that Brown is not opposed to unions, and has been "dealing successfully" with union groups representing other staffers like food service workers. The university is also willing to talk to graduate students about their issues, he said, but unions are for workers, not students.Although the current decision reverses a previous one, the NYU case reversed over 25 years of precedent, during which graduate assistants were not regarded as employees, University of Pennsylvania spokesperson Lori Doyle told The Scientist. Students come to Penn for an education, Doyle said: "They don't come here to get a job."The NLRB decision stems from Brown's dispute of the results of a 2001 election, in which 450 graduate students employed as research assistants, teaching assistants, and proctors voted on whether to join the United Auto Workers union. The university impounded the results before they could be counted. A similar scenario has played out on other campuses. At another union vote among graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania last year, Lauren Nauta, a graduate student in the history department at Penn, told The Scientist that exit polls suggested that at least 60% had voted to join a union. Penn impounded the ballots, and the exact result remains unknown.And in April, Columbia graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants went on strike after the university refused to recognize the results of an election, in which the majority decided to join a union by signing membership cards. Graduate students need unions because unions legally require the university to recognize and negotiate with students "in good faith," Maida Rosenstein, president of local 2110 of the United Auto Workers union, which includes graduate assistants at New York University, told The Scientist. "I think a union is absolutely essential because it has teeth," David Wolach, a fifth-year graduate student in the Columbia Philosophy Department and member of the union, known as Graduate Student Employees United, told The Scientist.Penn's Nauta told The Scientist said that the NLRB ruling was split along party lines, with Republicans in the majority opinion and Democrats dissenting. One Republican board seat will become available in the coming months, she said, and a change in administration could change the board's majority opinion.Yale's Zivarts noted that students can form a union without NLRB certification. Although this would mean that students can't turn to support from the NLRB in case of a strike or employer misconduct, the NLRB's inability to resolve disputes with universities in a timely manner has turned him off of the organization. The NLRB "hasn't helped us any," he said.

Govt: No grad student unions

US NLRB says students at private universities can't organize, but groups vow to push on

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