NYU Graduate Students Urge Labor-Relations Board to Act on Union Representation

A delegation of 50 graduate-student workers from New York University traveled by bus to Washington today to deliver a letter to the National Labor Relations Board that asks for a quick decision on their nearly two-year-old petition for an election to vote on union representation. In June a National Labor Relations Board official declared that NYU teaching and research assistants might be formally considered employees, potentially clearing the way for them to unionize by seeking the reversal of a 2004 NLRB decision that denied collective-bargaining rights to graduate students who work at private colleges. In October 2010 a ruling by the NLRB said that graduate teaching and research assistants at NYU deserved a full hearing on their request for a union vote.