Penn's would-be graduate-student union is facing yet another national setback to unionization.
Following a 2004 National Labor Relations Board ruling against graduate student unionization, administrators at New York University decided this past summer not to renegotiate the university's contract with UAW Local 2110.
UAW Local 2110 had been the only recognized graduate student union at a private university in the United States.
NYU alleged that the union had violated the agreement by demanding control over some academic decisions, such as teaching eligibility, and by filing excessive grievances. The agreement expired yesterday.
Members of Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania traveled to New York yesterday, joining a protest of graduate employees from around the East Coast in support of their peers at NYU, but their office could not be reached for comment.
Mary Reynolds, co-chairwoman of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization -- GET-UP's Yale counterpart -- said that the demise of the NYU compact would not slow the activity of graduate-student unionizers. She called the NYU decision "shocking" and organized a Yale contingent 100 strong "to support [Local 2110] in their fight."
Lori Doyle, a spokeswoman for Penn, said that while the University "is not opposed to unionization," it has "maintained all along that graduate students are students and not employees."
"They have every right to voice their opinion, [but] teaching is an essential component of a graduate student's educational experience," Doyle said. She did not foresee the University taking retaliatory action against any graduate students who continue to work toward collective bargaining.
In the 3-2 decision handed down in July 2004 involving Brown University, the NLRB held that teaching assistants are not employees as defined by the National Labor Relations Act and thus cannot unionize.
This decision overruled the Board's then-four-year-old landmark finding in favor of a graduate student union at New York University, which had itself overruled 25 years of precedent and enabled the school's graduate student union, the United Auto Workers Local 2110, to become the only recognized graduate-student union in private higher education.
In this most recent decision, affirming members of the NLRB maintained that "graduate student assistants ‹¨« are primarily students and have a primarily educational, not economic, relationship with their university." They emphasized that the National Labor Relations Act governs only "a fundamentally economic relationship between employees and employers" and expressed their fear that "the imposition of collective bargaining ‹¨« would intrude upon the academic relationship between the university and students."
The two dissenting members of the NLRB felt, however, that "collective bargaining by graduate students is increasingly a fact of American university life," adding that the board's "harsh" decision was "woefully out of touch with reality."
"Not only can universities avoid dealing with graduate student unions, they are also free to retaliate against graduate students who act together to address their working conditions," the dissenting members wrote, predicting increased labor clashes as a result.
The Brown decision was a set-back for GET-UP, which took UAW Local 2110 as a model for its own efforts. This development also comes on the heels of an especially active period for the Ivy League unionization effort, following strikes by graduate students at Yale and Columbia universities earlier this year and by GET-UP in 2004.
The fight to unionize - February 26-27, 2003: Hundreds of graduate students cast votes in favor of and opposing unionization. The University files -- and wins -- an appeal and the votes are never counted. A Daily Pennsylvanianpoll finds that those in favor of a union likely won. - February 26-27, 2004: GET-UP members take part in a two-day strike at Penn. - July 13, 2004: In a 3-2 decision involving a case at Brown University, NLRB rules that teaching assistants are not employees. - August 26, 2004: National Labor Relations Board rules against GET-UP unionization at Penn. - September 23, 2004: GET-UP argues for union in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee in Washington. - March, 2005: GET-UP leaders call for fully paid health insurance for graduate students at Penn. - April 18-22, 2005: Graduate student groups at Columbia, Yale strike. - August 31, 2005: Representatives from Penn, Yale and NYU protest at NYU in response to NYU administration's decision not to renew their contract with that school‹¨«s graduate student union.
