Graduate students at private universities who are paid for teaching and research will not be regarded as employees with the right to unionize under new plans set out by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The move reverses a 2016 decision by the NLRB that did allow paid graduate students to unionize. The board is now seeking public comments for 60 days after which it is required to review and address the comments and show it has taken them into account before adopting a final version of the rule.
The NLRB’s new plan, outlined on 20 September, will exempt from the board’s jurisdiction undergraduate and graduate students “who perform services for financial compensation in connection with their studies”. If accepted, the proposal would overturn an August 2016 decision that gave graduate students working as teaching or research assistants at Columbia University the status of employees with the right to join unions. That reversed a 2004 decision denying graduate students at Brown University employment and union rights – a ruling that, in turn, overturned a decision in 2000 to give students at New York University the right to unionize.
The new rule falsely asserts that grad workers – who grade papers, do research and teach classes that keep their universities running – are merely students
American Federation of Teachers
NLRB members cite four reasons for the proposed changes. One is that students generally help faculty members with teaching and research because the work is vital to their education. The NLRB also notes that students tend to spend “a limited amount of time” carrying out their paid work and that they receive funding whether or not they perform the extra duties — making the payments resemble financial aid rather than wages. The final point made by the NLRB is that students and their faculty advisers collaborate at an individualized level — an approach that does not lend itself to collective bargaining.
Todd Lyon, an attorney at the employment law firm Fisher Phillips, says that if the regulation is adopted it will have “a dramatic impact” for universities and private colleges. “No longer would student-workers have the right to form unions and collectively bargain with their schools,” he says.
Essential work
University administrations, which have resisted the unionization since 2016, have welcomed the decision. “Graduate students are students, first and foremost,” notes Daniel Diermeier, provost of the University of Chicago, which has refused to recognize its graduate students’ union. “A collective bargaining agreement would likely create an environment of standardization without room for differentiation, changing the nature and scope of the relationships of graduate students to their advisors, other faculty, and degree programs.” US board gives student assistants unionization rights
Graduate student organizations, however, counter that their paid work is essential for their departments’ operation. Indeed, a few organizations have carried out walkouts and hunger strikes, while the Harvard University graduate students’ union is currently threatening to call a strike over issues of pay, benefits, and protection from discrimination.
“The new rule falsely asserts that grad workers – who grade papers, do research and teach classes that keep their universities running – are merely students,” the American Federation of Teachers, which is affiliated with several university graduate student organizations, states. “It would permit universities to profit from grads’ work on the one hand, while claiming they aren’t even workers on the other.”
