In a July 13 decision released late last week, the National Labor Relations Board declared that graduate students at Brown University are indeed students -- not statutory employees with the right to enter into a union with NLRB protection. The decision reverses a 2001 ruling by the NLRB which declared that graduate students at New York University had a right to unionize.
"Because they are first and foremost students, and their status as a graduate assistant is contingent on their continued enrollment as students, we find that they are primarily students," the decision reads, in part. "The evidence demonstrates that the relationship between Brown's graduate student assistants and Brown is primarily educational."
Though no ruling has yet been made in Penn's battle with its own would-be graduate student union -- Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania -- the NLRB ordered the case back to the Regional Director "for further consideration consistent with Brown University."
Dorothy Moore-Duncan, a spokesperson for the regional board that will decide Penn's case, said a decision will come soon.
"We are actively reviewing the Brown decision and we have to speak with the parties on the Penn decision," Moore-Duncan said. "I assure you, we are not going to take long."
Though GET-UP Co-Chairwoman Sayumi Takahashi expects a similar ruling in the Penn case, she said the organization will continue to fight on behalf of graduate students.
"We do find the NLRB decision on Brown to be disappointing, but it's not a death-blow," Takahashi said. "We're continuing to function as a union, to grow our membership, and just to try and keep people informed of the issues," she added.
Interim provost Peter Conn said he was pleased with the Brown ruling.
"What the Brown decision does is to ratify and articulate the fundamental educational argument that this University has been making in the whole course of the discussion," Conn said. "So we welcome the Brown decision."
The decision warned that "collective bargaining would unduly infringe upon traditional academic freedoms."
Conn agreed.
"Graduate students come to Penn to get Ph.Ds," Conn said. "This is the overwhelming and self-evident reality of a graduate student's relationship to this University -- to transform that fundamental reality into a collective bargaining model is simply inimical to the fundamental purposes of this University."
In Nov. 2002, an NLRB ruling allowed GET-UP to hold a vote on campus to determine whether graduate students supported a union. After the election was held in Feb. 2003, the ballots were sealed and now remain in the hands of the NLRB after an appeal was filed by the University.
University Board of Trustees Chairman James Riepe commended the NLRB's ruling on the Brown decision.
"I think that [the ruling] is extremely favorable for higher education generally, and the decision was I thought very thoughtful and made exactly the point that we had been making on the general issue," Riepe said. "That is that Graduate students are students first, not employees, and that the teaching is an integral part of their education."
