A quarter-century-long fight for a graduate-assistant union at Yale University has taken a new twist that could make it easier for unions to gain a foothold on campuses.
Unite Here Local 33 has filed petitions for union elections in nine academic departments, focusing on those where union support is strong. The formation of graduate unions in departmental “microunits” is a test case for higher education, several labor-law experts said. Yale opposes the strategy and has asked a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in Hartford, Conn., to rule whether it is legal.
The Yale battle could have implications for graduate collective-bargaining at other private colleges. At colleges where support for a campuswide bargaining unit does not exist, activists would be able to file for union elections in departments where they know they can win. Critics, including graduate students, deride the strategy as “gerrymandering.” Organizers describe it more benignly: “Departments that want to have a union will have one, and those that don’t won’t,” says Aaron Greenberg, a political-science doctoral student and chair of Local 33.
The petitions for the Yale bargaining units were the first filed following an NLRB ruling in August involving Columbia University that gave graduate teaching and research assistants at private colleges the right to unionize. Graduate students at several colleges have begun to organize in earnest, and an election has been set at Harvard University for November.
It’s unclear if other union efforts will adopt the approach taken at Yale. A campuswide union has greater political clout, and organizers are generally inclined to build as big a tent as possible. For example, graduate unions often include research assistants in addition to teaching assistants, even though including the former may make winning a union election a steeper climb.
Yale’s history of graduate unionization suggests why a departmental approach might make sense. In 2003 graduate-union organizers held a symbolic vote in an effort to demonstrate overwhelming support for a graduate union. To the shock of activists, the vote narrowly failed, 694 to 651.
A grad-student victory in the Yale case could give activists a potent new tool in their organizing kit. Administrators, meanwhile, are concerned at the possibility of managing potentially dozens of collective-bargaining agreements with graduate students, says William B. Gould IV, a Stanford University emeritus law professor and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.
The ability to form graduate unions at the departmental level could make organizing a union easier, Mr. Gould says. Campuswide organizing is “like trying to herd a group of cats together who have evolved in dissimilar situations,” he says. “You have to exert more energy in organizing. The more decentralized it is, the easier the organizing job is.”
‘Community of Interest’
Collective-bargaining microunits received renewed interest from union activists following a 2011 labor-board ruling that affirmed the right of a group of certified nursing assistants to form a bargaining unit, says William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, at Hunter College of the City University of New York. The employer, Specialty Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, had unsuccessfully argued that the appropriate unit should also include other service and maintenance employees at its facility.
The labor board in that case also clarified that when an employer challenges a bargaining unit, as Yale has done, the employer must show that the employees excluded from the unit have an “overwhelming community of interest” with those who are included.
Lynn Cooley, dean of the Yale graduate school, has tried to make that case. Since all Yale doctoral students teach at some point, they are all part of the university’s Teaching Fellow Program, which is administered centrally in the graduate school. The policies that govern the program and expectations of work hours apply to all students, Ms. Cooley says, and all students take part in the same basic training to teach in a Yale classroom.
“If we have a union on campus for teaching fellows,” Ms. Cooley says, “all the teaching fellows and all the departments should be able to participate in that decision.”
Pro-union graduate students, meanwhile, argue that departments are, in fact, appropriate bargaining units because the experiences and working conditions of students differ depending on their discipline. In the history of art, for example, discussion sessions with undergraduates are held in museums, where graduate teachers try to shape how students think about art. “It’s a specific way of thinking about teaching that is different than other departments on campus,” says Emily Sessions, a fourth-year doctoral student in the department.
To determine whether the microunit strategy is appropriate, the labor board will also consider whether the workers have distinct skills, training, and job functions, and whether they are supervised separately and are interchangeable with other units, says Michael J. Wishnie, a Yale law professor.
Yale may have an uphill climb in stopping the departmental strategy, he says. “The inquiry is whether the proposed bargaining unit is an appropriate unit, not the most appropriate unit,” Mr. Wishnie says. “So there’s a little bit of a thumb on the scale in favor of the workers.”
The microunits strategy isn’t just pitting administrators against students; it’s also divisive among students. Alexandru Georgescu, a sixth-year physics Ph.D. student, says Local 33 is trying to “bypass a normal democratic election.” It wouldn’t make sense for Yale to provide different levels of health care or dental support to unionized and nonunionized students, he says, so the negotiations with unionized students would, by default, affect all doctoral students. “They’re saying, We’re going to have a union whether you want one or not,” Mr. Georgescu says.
What’s more, both pro- and anti-union students in departments where an election petition hasn’t been filed complain they don’t have a voice on a matter that could affect them, says Nicholas Vincent, chair of the Graduate Student Assembly. “There’s a theme of disenfranchisement,” he says.
That led the student group to pass a resolution in October 44 to 17 against the microunits strategy. Ultimately, however, the decisions that matter most are that of the regional director and possibly the full labor board if an appeal is filed. Hearings before the regional director concluded in October, and a decision could come as early as November.
Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.
