In a far-reaching opinion, the National Labor Relations Board ruled last week that graduate teaching assistants are employees eligible to seek collective-bargaining rights. The decision gives T.A.'s at private colleges across the country the precedent they have been seeking in their battle for union rights, but it may also lead to a new battle in federal court.
The labor board’s unanimous ruling was issued in a case involving New York University and the Graduate Students Organizing Committee, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers.
In its decision, the three-member panel upheld an April ruling by an N.L.R.B. regional director in New York, who found that N.Y.U.'s teaching assistants were employees as defined by the National Labor Relations Act and, as such, could bargain collectively. While many public universities have recognized bargaining units of T.A.'s, private institutions —including N.Y.U. — have sought to prevent bargaining, saying that T.A.'s are primarily students, not employees.
In last week’s ruling, the labor board relied heavily on its decision last year involving the Boston Medical Center. In that case, which has since become the benchmark for several rulings on teaching assistants, the board ruled that medical residents and interns were employees entitled to bargain — not merely students, who would be ineligible. In that decision, the board stated, “Nothing in the statute suggests that persons who are students but also employees should be exempted from the coverage and protection of the act.” In the N.Y.U. case, the board said it had applied the same principles and reached the same conclusion. “Like the house staff in Boston Medical Center, ample evidence exists to find that graduate assistants plainly and literally fall within the meaning of ‘employee’ as defined” by the act.
Lest there be any confusion, the board clearly spelled out its opinion in its concluding paragraph: “Stripped to its essence, the argument of the employer and others is that graduate assistants who work for a college or university are not entitled to the protections of the act because they are students. The board’s broad and historic interpretation of the act rejects such a narrow reading of the statute. Accordingly, we will not deprive workers who are compensated by, and under the control of, a statutory employer of their fundamental statutory rights to organize and bargain with their employer simply because they are students.”
N.Y.U. officials were disappointed by the decision, and they predicted dire consequences for education — way beyond the borders of their campus. “I don’t think they have fully taken into account the impact on both graduate and undergraduate education in the United States, which is our principal concern,” said Robert Berne, vice president for academic and health affairs at N.Y.U. He described the decision as having “powerful” ramifications.
Administrators at other private institutions agreed. Richard C. Levin, the president of Yale University, where for 10 years a union has been battling for recognition, issued a statement urging N.Y.U. to fight the decision in federal court.
N.Y.U. officials said they hadn’t yet decided what course to take. If the union wins election as the graduate students’ bargaining agent, the university could force the case into federal court by refusing to bargain with the union. Such a refusal would prompt the N.L.R.B. to sue the university. But Mr. Berne said that the traditional decision-making processes at American institutions are “not in any way analogous to collective bargaining.”
He added, “So, who teaches what courses and how the courses are taught and what is taught — the notion that that’s decided in collective bargaining instead of in the faculty-student consultation process — is very worrisome to the university, and the opinion clearly gives that no serious attention at all.” The board disputed N.Y.U.'s argument that its case was distinguishable from the Boston Medical Center’s and proceeded to reject every other argument that N.Y.U. advanced to try to prove that teaching assistants were not employees.
First the board threw out N.Y.U.'s argument that teaching assistants are not paid for their work and simply receive financial aid. Then it rebuffed the argument that the work of graduate students is primarily educational. Even if the T.A.'s do derive some educational benefit, by learning to teach or conduct research, that doesn’t mean they are not employees, the board ruled. “It is undisputed that working as a graduate assistant is not a requirement for obtaining a graduate degree in most departments,” the board said. “Nor is it a part of the graduate-student curriculum in most departments. Therefore, notwithstanding any educational benefit derived from graduate-assistants’ employment, we reject the premise of the employer’s argument that graduate assistants should be denied collective-bargaining rights because their work is primarily educational.”
Finally, the labor board disagreed with N.Y.U.'s assertion that giving collective-bargaining rights to teaching assistants would hamper academic freedom. Repeating part of its decision from the Boston Medical Center case, the board said, “After nearly 30 years of experience with bargaining units of faculty members, we are confident that in bargaining concerning units of graduate assistants, the parties can confront any issues of academic freedom as they would any other issue in collective bargaining.”
The board said that N.Y.U.'s concern about infringement on academic freedom grew out of mere speculation that a T.A. union would bring curricular matters to the bargaining table. “Such conjecture does not, however, establish infringement,” the board said.
Indeed, Julie Kushner, a U.A.W. official helping to organize the N.Y.U. teaching assistants, characterized as “absurd” the university’s argument that collective bargaining would hurt academic freedom and education. “For the university to somehow put itself above labor relations is ridiculous.”
She noted that the labor board had “soundly rejected the notion that somehow collective bargaining would interfere with academic freedom and strongly confirmed that graduate assistants have the right to collective bargaining.”
Of course, it must still be determined whether N.Y.U. teaching assistants want collective bargaining. The regional director’s decision allowed the union to hold an election to answer that question, but the university’s appeal held up the counting of the ballots. The votes are to be tallied within several days.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A14
