Graduate Teaching Assistants Can Unionize
March 22, 2001
On November 15, 2000, New York University
(NYU) announced that a majority of its graduate teaching assistants had voted
to unionize, thereby winning a certified collective-bargaining unit and
raising the possibility that NYU, for the first time, would be required to
negotiate with a union when determining compensation, benefits and other
working conditions for its graduate assistants.
This historic vote followed a National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) ruling two weeks earlier in New York University and
International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement
Workers of American, AFL-CIO. The NLRB ruled that NYU’s graduate
assistants were “employees” within the meaning of the National Labor
Relations Act. Therefore, according to the NLRB, the NYU graduate
assistants had the same statutory rights to bargain and organize as employees
of any other private employer.
The NYU decision follows on the heels of the
NLRB’s ruling last November in the Boston Medical Center case, in which the
NLRB determined that medical interns, residents and fellows had collective
bargaining rights. Together, the NYU and Boston Medical Center rulings
reverse 20-year-old NLRB precedents, which had rejected the “employee”
characterization for students working in the area of their chosen academic
discipline or craft.
The NLRB was unpersuaded by NYU’s argument
that the relationship between the university and the graduate assistants was
different from the traditional employer-employee relationship because the
graduate assistants received financial aid rather than wages. The
graduate assistants taught a number of required undergraduate courses,
prepared and graded exams, and held office hours to meet with students.
The graduate assistants performed these duties in exchange for stipends,
tuition reimbursements and bookstore discounts. The NLRB concluded that
graduate assistants perform their duties for, and under the control of, the
university’s departments or programs, are paid for their work, and are
carried on the university payroll. Therefore, in the NLRB’s view, the
graduate assistants’ relationship with the university was
“indistinguishable from a traditional master-servant relationship.”
The NLRB also rejected NYU’s claim that,
because graduate assistants perform work that was primarily educational,
allowing them to unionize could impair academic freedom. The NLRB noted
that the parties could “confront any issues of academic freedom as they
would any other issue in collective bargaining” and found the graduate
assistants’ working conditions, and working relationship with the
university, to be indistinguishable in most circumstances from the
faculty’s.
Educators should be alert to the many new
issues raised by this NLRB ruling when responding to union campaigning,
collective bargaining and organizing on campus. Managers of labor
relations at every level should know their rights and obligations when dealing
with unions, union organizing campaigns, and bargaining demands by groups –
as well as individuals – which the institution might not have
previously considered to be among its workforce. Institutions should use
the occasion of this new NLRB ruling to train or to reeducate its managers on
the fundamentals of good labor relations, including representation rights,
equal employment opportunity, and appropriate conduct when dealing with
employees, and should consult with legal counsel for more specific guidance.
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