UAW and Instructor Staff Union

April 28, 2010
Graduate Students to New York U.: Recognize Our Union Now
By Audrey Williams June
http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-Students-to-New-York/65273/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Graduate students at New York University have asked the institution to voluntarily recognize their union. Or, say the students, they will take their case to a newly-constituted National Labor Relations Board, which has recently signaled that it might restore collective-bargaining rights for teaching and research assistants at private colleges.

"We're not entirely confident that the university will go ahead and do the right thing," said Kari Hensley, a member of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee. "That's why we're planning to go through the legal channels that are available to us. We're very confident that the NLRB is ready to reverse the injustice."

The group has given the university one week to act.

In 2001, New York University was the first private institution to recognize a graduate-employee union, following a labor-board ruling the previous year that said the university's teaching assistants were workers with full bargaining rights. The union negotiated its first contract, which included a 40-percent pay increase, fully paid health insurance, and a grievance procedure.

But when that contract expired in 2005, the university declined to renew it. That's because in 2004 the labor board, with new members and ruling in a different case, reversed the 2000 decision. Teaching assistants at private colleges are students, not workers, and therefore can't join unions, the 2004 ruling held. NYU agreed. Graduate workers went on a months-long strike, but administrators didn't budge.

Now, union advocates are ready to try again...