Columbia Graduate Students Win Right to Unionize

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY — Graduate students at Columbia University, and private universities around the country, have won the right to unionize after a Tuesday ruling from The National Labor Relations Board.

The board voted 3-1 in favor of a petition filed by The Graduate Workers of Columbia and United Auto Workers that would allow students serving as teaching assistants to be regarded as university employees employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act. The decision overturned precedent from a 2004 ruling in a case involving Brown University.

"The Brown University Board’s decision, in turn, deprived an entire category of workers of the protections of the Act, without a convincing justification in either the statutory language or the policies of the Act," read the board's decision.

United Auto Workers petitioned to represent graduate teaching assistants at Columbia in 2014. The petition was subsequently shot down by a regional branch of the NLRB, but the group appealed and the decision was reversed Tuesday.

The NLRB's decision will not be popular among school officials, both at Columbia and other private universities. Leading up to Tuesday, Columbia President Lee Bollinger spoke out against student's ability to unionize, student publication the Columbia Spectator reported.

"I feel like I have a responsibility as a professor, as a member of a community, to you as my student,” Bollinger told the Spectator. “I think when you say you’re my employee, I think that’s different from when you say you’re my student."

The university will be able to appeal Tuesday's ruling, but has not made an indication on whether or not it plans to. A university statement said the school will "continue our ongoing efforts to make Columbia a place where all students can achieve the highest levels of both intellectual accomplishment and personal fulfillment."

Administrators from nine prestigious universities also submitted a joint brief to the NLRB essentially echoing the sentiments of Columbia's administration — that student unionization would harm academic relationships with faculty, the Spectator reported.

But the NLRB rejected the notion that student's abilities to form unions would harm academics.

"In sum, there is no compelling reason—in theory or in practice—to conclude that collective bargaining by student assistants cannot be viable or that it would seriously interfere with higher education," reads the board's decision.

Photo: Flickr user InSapphoWeTrust via Creative Commons