Graduate students at private universities do not have the right to form labor unions, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Thursday, striking down its own landmark 2000 ruling that had led to a wave of organizing.
The long-awaited decision was split along party lines, with members of the board ruling, 3 to 2, that teaching assistants at Brown University are primarily students and are not covered by federal labor law. The United Automobile Workers had organized graduate students at Brown in 2001 and had successfully petitioned for a union election. Those ballots were impounded when the university appealed to the NLRB, and have remained uncounted ever since.
In 2000 the board, then controlled by Democratic appointees, ruled that graduate students at New York University could unionize, prompting organizing drives across the nation that signed up thousands of graduate students over the last four years. That work is now undone by the board’s ruling.
In the Brown case, the three Republican members appointed by President Bush ruled that the precedent before the NYU ruling was “sound and well reasoned.”
“Graduate-student assistants, including those at Brown, are primarily students and have a primarily educational, not economic, relationship with their university,” the majority wrote. They further found that since the money received by teaching assistants is the same as that received by students on fellowships, it is not “consideration for work” but financial aid.
The two Democratic members dissented, arguing that the majority was “woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality” and that their decision was based on an outdated view of academe.
Brown’s provost, Robert J. Zimmer, said in a written statement that the board “correctly recognizes that a graduate student’s experience is a mentoring relationship between faculty and students and is not an appropriate matter for collective bargaining.”
Phil Wheeler, a regional director of the United Automobile Workers, called the decision a blatantly political ruling and said it was disappointing that supposedly progressive universities had appealed the case to an “anti-union Bush board.”
Derailing Drives to Organize
Teaching assistants at some public universities have been unionized for decades, although the movement has gained momentum in recent years with victories at large institutions, including the University of California. Just this week, graduate students at the University of Illinois, who had been fighting for a union for more than 10 years, reached their first contract deal. State labor law governs those contracts.
In contrast, federal labor law had precluded such union drives at private institutions for years. The NYU ruling in 2000 prompted a series of organizing efforts at Brown, Columbia, and Tufts Universities, as well as at the University of Pennsylvania.
The universities fought those drives, though regional officials of the NLRB ruled that union elections could be held. Each of those decisions was appealed to the full labor board in Washington. The Brown ruling is the first to be issued, but decisions in the other cases are expected soon.
The Brown ruling may derail nascent organizing drives for TA unions at George Washington University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Southern California.
The board generally agreed with the arguments university administrators have made over the years: that teaching and research assistants are students, not employees, and that allowing them to unionize would hurt the academic relationship. The majority wrote: “Imposing collective bargaining would have a deleterious impact on overall educational decisions by the Brown faculty and administration.”
While acknowledging that graduate students at some public universities are unionized, the majority wrote: “Our decision does not turn on whether our nation’s universities are ivory towers or sweatshops. ... Rather, our decision turns on our fundamental belief that the imposition of collective bargaining on graduate students would improperly intrude into the educational process.”
In their dissent, the Democratic members of the NLRB contended that graduate students would continue to try to organize unions, and that the board should therefore apply the federal law to encourage collective bargaining and avoid labor disputes. “Even those who live the life of the mind must eat,” they wrote.
Dismay and Delight
As word of the decision spread, the American Federation of Teachers was holding its annual convention in Washington. Minutes after learning of the decision, Nat LaCour, the executive vice president, told members: “The ruling is outrageous. This must change.”
A spokeswoman at Columbia University said the institution would not comment on the ruling since it did not directly involve Columbia.
Lori Doyle, a spokeswoman for Penn, said administrators there are “delighted” by the ruling. “We are pleased that the NLRB has recognized what we’ve been saying all along: that graduate students are students, not employees,” she said. After quickly reviewing the decision, lawyers there said they expect to see a ruling soon on their case that would be consistent with the Brown decision.
Union leaders were holding out a sliver of hope, though. While acknowledging that the decision was a “major blow,” Lauren Nauta, the Penn union’s organizing chairwoman, said leaders of her group believe their case is different enough from the one at Brown that the NLRB’s ruling could be different.
Ms. Nauta, a Ph.D. candidate in history, said students at Penn were outraged by the decision and what they see as its political aspect. “Basically this comes down to Bush’s Republican appointees overturning the NYU precedent,” she said. “It’s very unclear what the distinction between graduate students at a public university and a private university would be. We feel that we’re employees, we pay taxes, and we should have the right to bargain collectively.”
Mr. Wheeler, the UAW official, cautioned that the fight to unionize graduate students was not over. The union could appeal the board’s ruling in federal court, or it could continue to try to organize unions, staging strikes and other labor actions to force universities to voluntarily recognize them.
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