Fed Board allows college students to unionize

WASHINGTON (AP) - Graduate students who work as researchers and teaching assistants in the nation's private universities have the same rights as other workers to form unions and negotiate working conditions, the National Labor Relations board ruled yesterday.

The unanimous ruling upholds a regional decision favoring the 1,500 New York University graduate assistants who voted to unionize this year. The board's decision makes NYU the first private American university subject to collective bargaining with graduate assistants, but the students' votes on whether to unionize remain untallied in a dispute with university officials.

"We will not deprive workers ... of their fundamental statutory rights to organize and bargain with their employer, simply because they are also students," the board said yesterday.

Students and their labor allies immediately praised the landmark decision, saying it would help them tackle long hours and poor working conditions. College officials say the decision threatens the basic relationship between professor and student, and threatens academic freedom.

It does not apply to public universities, which have some two-dozen bargaining units nationwide, because the primary labor law enforced by the board applies to the private sector. Public university workers fall under state laws; but there are 21 states with "right-to-work" laws that allow workers to hold jobs without joining unions or paying dues.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO labor confederation, said the NLRB decision "underscores what the graduate workers have known all along: Their long hours spent grading papers, teaching classes and holding office hours is real work, done by real employees of the university.''

He said in a statement 30,000 graduate teachers already have joined unions.

"We are going to be seeing a lot of union activism at other private universities because of this decision," said Patrick McCreery a graduate student in American Studies. "I'm going to be a partner in this relationship, as opposed to someone who is simply told what to do."

McCreery said the ruling will put students in a better position to negotiate pay and other benefits. Most students in arts and sciences earn about $13,000 a year, but the university's own estimates say a student needs at least $17,000 to live in New York City.

University response was sharp.

"They have shown a serious lack of understanding of graduate education,'' said John Beckman, NYU's spokesman. "These graduate assistants are first and foremost students. They are admitted as students, not recruited as employees."

Yale University, another private institution where graduate students have tried to organize, urged NYU to "carry the case to federal courts if it has the opportunity."

NYU and others contend the board excludes graduate students funded by outside grants, unnecessarily dividing scholars. The board says its decision covers students compensated by the university for services they provide.

"They have created artificial distinctions between different 'types' of graduate assistants," Beckman said.

The decisions can't be appealed. Beckman said the university had not decided whether it would take actions that would "avail ourselves of the court system."

Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education, which filed documents supporting the university, said many institutions fear that the NLRB decision could lay the groundwork for a reversal of a 1981 Supreme Court decision that precluded faculty in general from collective bargaining at private institutions.

"It erodes a relationship between faculty and students," he said of the NLRB decision. "From grading to who should graduate to the curriculum that might be taught, they could all become subjects of collective bargaining."

The waning influence of the labor movement has turned unions' eyes to college campuses. In the mid-1990s, unions began offering summer internships.

Last year, the board reversed a two-decade precedent and said medical residents, interns and fellows do have collective bargaining rights. That ruling cited other professions in which individuals serving in traineeships, such as associate lawyers and apprentice architects, are considered employees protected by federal laws.