The National Labor Relations Board has cleared the way for the unionization of student employees of the University of Chicago’s libraries, marking the second time this spring that it has declared undergraduate students eligible to bargain collectively.
In a ruling handed down on Tuesday, Peter Sung Ohr, director of the NLRB’s regional office in Chicago, rejected the university’s argument that the paid student workers in its libraries should be precluded from unionization because its relationship with them is primarily educational. Undergraduates account for the overwhelmingly majority of the more than 220 student workers that the decision allows to vote on forming a collective-bargaining unit, which would be affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Mr. Ohr’s ruling comes just over a month after a regional NLRB official in Baltimore declared undergraduate resident advisers at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., eligible to vote on forming a collective-bargaining unit affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. That unionization vote, initially planned for early this month, was subsequently called off by SEIU officials concerned that they had not been left enough time to mount a successful campaign. The organizers of that effort could attempt to hold another election as early as October.
Several higher-education associations have argued that it is a mistake to let undergraduate workers have union representation in dealing with the colleges they attend, but some labor experts characterize the unionization of undergraduates as a logical outcome of recent NLRB decisions allowing the unionization of graduate teaching and research assistants.