Graduate student employee unionization
[8] Labor laws in the United States and Canada permit collective bargaining for only limited classes of student-employees.
In private universities, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has power to determine whether graduate students are considered employees, which would give them collective bargaining rights.
The recognition of employee status would give graduate students the right to form a union and to bargain collectively.
[citation needed] Supporters of unionization argue that graduate employees' work is primarily an economic relationship.
For tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service considers the compensation of graduate student employees to be wages.
Some states have extended collective bargaining rights to graduate employees in response to unionization campaigns.
[13] Graduate student employees at private colleges and universities in the United States are covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
[15] After years of rejecting employee status to graduate students, the NLRB overturned the Adelphi University (1972) decision.
Under New York University and International Union, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, AFL–CIO (2000) (NYU), the NLRB applied the "compensated services" legal approach, ruling for the first time that graduate students at private universities were considered employees, and hence protected by the NLRA.
[15] In recent years, NYU's graduate student union filed a case seeking to overturn Brown University, which in 2012 the NLRB announced that it would reconsider.
[4] On December 17, 2014, graduate student unions affiliated with UAW at both Columbia University and The New School have filed petitions at the NLRB to overturn the Brown decision.
[17][18] Following the NLRB's 2016 Columbia University decision, student unionization in certified bargaining units grew by 14,820 members.
[21] The University of Wisconsin–Madison's Teaching Assistants Association was the first to be recognized as an independent employee bargaining unit in 1969 and was granted a contract in 1970.
Teaching assistants at the University at Buffalo began a union campaign in 1975, but withdrew their petition to the State of New York Public Employee Relations Board (PERB).
Other campuses from the State of New York University System, such as Albany, Binghamton, and Stony Brook, revived the union petition in 1984.
[34] Like the previous decades, the vast majority of graduate employee unions formed were from public universities.
[citation needed] Shortly thereafter, the University of Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton, and Stony Brook won recognition when the State of New York PERB ruled teaching assistants were employees and were granted collective bargaining rights.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Yale graduate students organized a sustained union drive campaign, which remains ongoing.
Additionally, Yale graduate students participated in a walkout on April 6, 1995, to demand union recognition.
The NLRB's Brown decision in 2004 reversed the legal protections and collective bargaining rights that, under NYU, had covered graduate students in private universities.
As a result, private university union drives have stalled in the courts in attempts to reverse the Brown decision.
[62] But in language highly critical of Brown, Tellem observed that "The instant record clearly shows that these graduate assistants are performing services under the control and direction of" New York University "for which they are compensated.
"[62] The New York Times said the Region 2 decision "lays the groundwork to overturn the 2004 ruling,"[62] and other media outlets agreed.
[63][64] NYU graduate students later filed a petition to overturn Brown University, which the NLRB agreed to review in 2012.
[65][66] On August 23, 2016, the NLRB reversed the 2004 Brown decision and ruled that student assistants are protected by the NLRA.
Unionization attempts since Columbia have been characterized by rapid establishment at the onset, followed by extensive internal challenges by the universities at which they are formed.
[69] This reversal of Board case law has led to recent challenges within the administrations of higher-ed institutions.
[32] Unionization has also been attributed to increased teaching workloads and financial difficulties imposed on graduate students, as since the 1970s universities have transferred more instruction tasks from tenure track faculty to adjunct faculty and graduate students as cost saving measures.
Graduate students became more inclined to recognize themselves as employees, and turned towards unionization to better demand bread-and-butter issues such as increased stipends or wages and benefits such as health insurance and child care.
During the sizable growth in the 1990s, graduate students were better able to access legal support, financial resources, and networking opportunities provided by the new leadership in the AFL–CIO and by unions such as UAW.
