The National Labor Relations Board has gone back-and-forth on whether graduate students at private universities can form unions three times in the past 19 years.

Observers expect that the National Labor Relations Board will reverse an Obama-era determination that graduate students are employees entitled to form unions.

The university drops its objections and comes to an agreement on who can be included in Academic Researchers United.

More than 2,000 individuals favor the bargaining unit—the first at a private university in the US.

Administration officials contend that research and teaching assistants are students, not workers, and want to take the matter to federal court.

The decision affects about 5,000 graduate students at the university who are eligible to join the union.

Quentin Wheeler’s firing of department chairs earlier this year didn’t sit well with university faculty members.  

Student workers seek voluntary recognition of their unions by university administrators out of concern that political appointees may deny their unions legal status.

The university’s administration tried unsuccessfully to stop the vote.