As many of you know, I'm currently a graduate student at a major university in New York city. Over the last three years there has been a concerted effort by most of the graduate students here to convince both the university and the national labor relations board (NLRB) to allow the graduate student population to form a union and a collective bargaining unit that will ensure that graduate students get the rights that any worker deserves. The university has fought us tooth and nail on this issue, bringing forth all of their financial, political and legal clout and directing it at the NLRB in an effort to redefine whether a graduate student working in a lab (graduate research associate, or GRA) could legally be considered an "employee." The university contended that we should not, and therefore if we are not employees then we are not subject to the provisions of the National Labor Relations act which states that any group of employees has the right to form a union if a majority votes in favor of doing so.
In the spring of 2002 the graduate students held a vote to decide whether we wanted to associate ourselves with the United Auto Workers union (UAW), a loose conglomeration of manufacturing employees, clerical workers, and increasingly, students who have together formed a large and powerful group. The votes were counted, but the results were sealed. As soon as the vote was held the university received a temporary injunction from a federal court prohibiting release of the results of the vote pending the outcome of a lawsuit the university had filed against the NLRB stating that GRAs are not employees and thus not entitled to form a union. Informal counts suggested that the measure had passed by a wide margin.
Why would GRAs consider themselves employees? Consider this - as a GRA I am paid an annual salary by the professor for whom I'm working. I'm one of the lucky ones - many GRAs in other fields don't get paid at all. I have not taken a class in over a year and a half. Every day I come into the lab, do my experiments and leave. Sounds like a job, doesn't it? My work and the work of others like me forms the basis for the research that goes on at the school, research that brings in considerable amounts of money in the form of federal grants. The university takes 49% of that grant money in "indirect costs," that is, paying "overhead," "clerical and administrative costs," and other "discretionary costs." Like new offices for the dean and new buildings to entice high profile professors to come. In short - we're employees bringing in a lot of money to the school. Many graduate students have families and children, and yet are given only minimal health insurance benefits that often don't cover spouses. They often work ridiculously long hours without any overtime compensation. Whether they graduate (or even are allowed to stay in the program) is the decision of closed-door meetings of professors who often apply spurious criteria for deciding when a student is allowed to graduate. The types of things that would never be allowed to happen if the students could organize.
Today the NLRB announced the results of their deliberation. In a 3-2 vote that, unsurprisingly, went along party lines, the Republican-appointed majority voted to reverse a previous decision that had allowed NYU students to form a collective bargaining unit and unionize. An except from the minority opinion reads:
"the majority's reasons, at bottom, amount to the claim
that graduate student collective bargaining is simply incompatible with the nature and mission of the university. This revelation will surely come as a surprise on many campuses - not least, at New York University, a first
rate institution where graduate students now work under a collective
bargaining agreement reached in the wake of the decision that is overruled
here."
It goes on to say:
"Today's decision is woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality... It disregards the plain language of the statute - which defines employees so broadly that graduate students who perform services for, and under the control of, their universities are easily covered - to make a policy decision that rightly belongs to Congress. The reasons offered by the majority for its decision do not stand up to scrutiny."
For those of who think that my political leanings exist because it's currently "trendy" to bash Bush and the Republican party, I say witness Republican values in action. You'll work when they want, how they want, under their terms. And if worker's rights are somehow inconvenient, they're eliminated. Welcome to George W. Bush's America.
Not only by the republican machine...but by the fact that they'd refuse to acknowledge the 'smaller' people who help them out.
Seriously, it was stuff like that which influenced my decision to leave the field of social services. I LIKED what I did...I hated the bureaucratic machine...the policy makers who made all the decisions but weren't the ones doing the work.
I was union in my first job...and non-union in my last one. I can't say that the union helped very much in the first job...but it definitely made me feel better to have the bargaining tool there. To have what little protection they offered. I swore, after my last job, that I wouldn't take another job unless it offered membership in the union. Any union...