Labor Board Gives Green Light to Academic Organizing
By Hans P. Johnson
Recent rulings from the New York office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have raised the possibility that more academics may soon have access to collective bargaining. In April teaching assistants at New York University conducted a union election after the regional NLRB director held that graduate-student employees are entitled to bargain collectively under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which governs collective bargaining at private colleges and universities. That decision followed another ruling by the regional NLRB director in November that gave the green light to a long-stalled unionization drive by faculty members at Manhattan College, another private institution in New York. Voting took place at the college the following month.
The administrations of both NYU and Manhattan College appealed the regional rulings to the national NLRB in Washington. Results in the NYU election will remain sealed until the national board announces the disposition of the university administration's appeal.
In June the national board rejected the appeal by the Manhattan College administration. Shortly afterward, ballots were counted from the college's election; in a 76 to 47 vote, the faculty rejected collective bargaining.
Despite this result, the national board's decision regarding Manhattan College has given hope to would-be organizers of faculty unions at other private campuses. The ruling may be seen as an advancement over previous NLRB decisions that have interpreted the Supreme Court's 1980 ruling in the case of Yeshiva University. In that decision, the Court stated that faculty at Yeshiva were "managerial" employees and thus ineligible to unionize under the NLRA.
Patrick Shaw, director of the AAUP's Department of Organizing and Services, calls the June ruling a "harbinger of change" at the NLRB. He notes, however, that even if the Manhattan College decision is followed in other cases, "it will not open private-sector unionizing for all comers because of the particular facts of the case." A copy of the Manhattan College ruling is available on the Web site of the Chronicle of Higher Education <http://www.chronicle.com>.
Regarding the NYU graduate students, Shaw traces a trend in recent NLRB rulings toward allowing more collective bargaining for employees once deemed apprentices, including a landmark 1999 NLRB ruling allowing a union drive by interns and residents at an academic hospital. "As the Boston Medical Center ruling was for residents and interns, the NYU case is for graduate students," says Shaw. "Like other campus employees, graduate student assistants should have the right to organize to bargain collectively without discrimination or reprisal."
Faculty members express mixed opinions on whether collective bargaining for graduate students is a sound idea, with some worrying that unions disrupt supervisory relations. Yet in late 1999, Gordon Hewitt, a Tufts University research analyst, revealed that among three hundred faculty members he polled at five institutions with graduate student unions, 92 percent said that a union did not hinder their ability to advise graduate students.
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