Graduate Student Assistants Are Not Statutory Employees
September 10, 2004
On July 13, 2004, the National Labor Relations Board (Board), in a 3-2 decision involving Brown University, ruled that graduate student assistants are not employees within the meaning of Section 2(3) of the National Labor Relations Act (Act). The Board held that such individuals are students and are not statutory employees. The majority opinion is signed by Chairman Robert J. Battista, and Members Peter C. Schaumber and Ronald Meisburg. Members Wilma B. Liebman and Dennis P. Walsh dissented. Brown University, 342 NLRB No. 43.
The decision overrules the Board’s decision four years ago in New York University, 332 NLRB 1204 (2000), which ruled that graduate student assistants were employees within the meaning of Section 2(3) of the Act. NYU had overruled more than 25 years of precedent under which graduate student assistants had not been regarded as statutory employees.
In the Brown decision, the Board interpreted the Act’s definition of “employee” in light of the “underlying fundamental premise of the act,” i.e. that the Act is “designed to cover economic relationships.” The majority concluded: “The Board’s longstanding rule that it will not assert jurisdiction over relationships that are ‘primarily educational’ is consistent with these principles.” In reaching this conclusion, the majority in Brown stated:
After carefully analyzing these issues, we have come to the conclusion that the Board’s pre-NYU principle of regarding graduate student assistants as nonemployees was sound and well reasoned. It is clear to us that graduate student assistants, including those at Brown, are primarily students and have primarily an educational, not economic, relationship with the their university.
The majority concluded that there were policy reasons for declining to extend collective bargaining rights to students, because it would intrude upon the academic relationship between the university and students. The Board further found that it would not effectuate the national labor policy to accord these individuals’ bargaining rights because they are primarily students.
In reaching its decision in Brown, the Board dismissed a representation petition filed by the United Auto Workers union seeking to represent approximately 450 graduate students employed as teaching assistants, research assistants and proctors. It reversed a Regional Director’s Decision and Direction of Election that had relied on NYU in finding that these persons are statutory employees and constitute an appropriate unit for collective bargaining. The election was conducted on December 6, 2001, and the ballots were impounded pending the disposition of the union’s request for review.
In dissent, Members Liebman and Walsh observed that “collective bargaining by graduate students is increasingly a fact of American university life.” They characterized the majority’s decision as “woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality” and stated that:
The result of the Board’s ruling is harsh. Not only can universities avoid dealing with graduate student unions, they are also free to retaliate against graduate students who act together to address their working conditions.
The dissent pointed to the broad definition of “employee” in the Act, arguing that the Board was not free to create its own exclusion for graduate assistants. According to the dissent, American universities increasingly rely on graduate students to perform important teaching and other work. Denying graduate students labor law rights, the dissent predicted, will lead to increased labor disputes on campus.
The Board majority expressed no opinion regarding the Board’s decision in Boston Medical Center, 330 NLRB 152 (1999), relied on heavily in the NYU
decision, in which a Board majority found that interns, residents and house
staff at teaching hospitals were employees within the meaning of Section
2(3) of the Act.
For more information, e-mail Mark Spognardi at
mark.spognardi@hklaw.com or call toll free, 1-888-688-8500.
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