The National Labor Relations Board ruled this month that teaching and research assistants at private universities are not employees and are not covered by federal labor law. Private universities therefore do not have to recognize or negotiate with TA’s unions. The long-awaited ruling overturned the board’s own landmark decision in 2000, which required universities to recognize such unions. The Chronicle answers a few questions about what the new ruling means.
Is this over now, or can the unions appeal the decision?
The United Automobile Workers, which represented the Brown University teaching assistants who were the subject of the labor board’s ruling, may appeal to federal court. Phil Wheeler, a UAW regional director, has said the union is considering its options.
Does this ruling mean that such unions are illegal?
No. The ruling simply means that the universities are not required to bargain with graduate-student unions. UAW leaders have said they will continue to fight for voluntary recognition. At the University of Pennsylvania, where the proposed TA union is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, union leaders sent a note after the NLRB’s latest decision saying they would keep fighting. “Our numbers are still growing and our leadership is still committed to our campaign, and we’re still confident that we will eventually have a union here at Penn,” wrote Christina Collins, a union spokeswoman. However, given how long and hard these institutions have fought against the unionization drives, getting them to willingly bargain without any legal leverage is a long shot at best.
What about New York University? Does the ruling mean the graduate students’ union there must be dissolved?
NYU originally made many of the same arguments that Brown made, namely that teaching assistants are primarily students. A spokesman there said the university was “gratified” by the ruling. The contract between the administration and graduate assistants comes up for renewal next year. Given the ruling, the university could choose not to bargain with the union in the future, but John Beckman, a university spokesman, says officials won’t decide on their next move until they carefully review the new ruling.
What happens to the organizing efforts that were under way at other private institutions, including George Washington University and the University of Southern California?
They can continue, although without firm legal footing. After the NYU ruling, unions were able to quickly gather enough support at several institutions to force union elections. (Those ballots were impounded when the universities appealed, and now they will not be counted.) That path will not be open to the unions under the new ruling. Instead, the unions are left back where they were in the 1990s. Some graduate students at Yale, for instance, have been lobbying for a union for years, long before the NYU ruling in 2000 gave them a better chance at success.
James A.W. Shaw is president of the graduate-student union at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. While saying he is outraged by the NLRB’s decision, he encouraged union leaders to consider the example of his union’s history. The Massachusetts state labor board ruled in the late 1970s that teaching assistants at UMass were not employees. However, 12 years later the graduate assistants organized a union and demanded that the university recognize it. After a strike, the university agreed to an election and for four years the union and university negotiated contracts even though the state labor board still didn’t recognize the union.
“Grad TA’s and RA’s at private campuses should not be deterred by a Republican administration’s wrongheaded decision,” Mr. Shaw said in a written statement. “Rather, they should fight on.”
These union elections were held more than two years ago. Why did this decision take so long?
The board has an enormous backlog of cases, making a swift ruling on any issue unlikely. In addition, the board has not often had its full complement of five members in recent years, stalling some decisions where the members were split 2 to 2.
How did the NLRB shift its thinking so much in just four years since the NYU decision?
Union leaders argue that the decision is clearly political. It’s the result, they say, of newly appointed Republican members. Then again, in 2000, the board was controlled by Democratic members. Some union leaders emphasize that the decision in the NYU case that permitted a teaching-assistant union was bipartisan: two Democrats and one Republican.
What about after the November election? Would a Democratic administration mean a return to the NYU precedent?
It’s possible. University administrators see the last four years as the aberration and argue that the NYU case was simply wrongly decided. Union leaders, however, maintain that the NYU decision was correct and returning to the previous precedent is out of touch with the current labor situation in academe.
If the Republicans lose control of the White House, the majority control of the labor board would also switch. The board’s five members are appointed to five-year terms, with one member’s term expiring every year. The two Democrats currently on the board wrote a sharply worded dissent in this month’s decision. “The developments that brought graduate students to the board will not go away, but they will have to be addressed elsewhere, if the majority’s decision stands,” they wrote. “That result does American universities no favors.”
Having decisions bounce back and forth from one administration to the next is not uncommon, says William B. Gould IV, a Democrat and former chairman of the board under President Clinton. He emphasizes that the board is a “quasi-judicial” agency whose members serve relatively short terms rather than lifetime appointments. “Congress has really placed its imprimatur on the idea of precedent reversal to a greater extent with the board than would be true in the judiciary,” Mr. Gould says.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 50, Issue 47, Page A10
