Grand student's union hopes face new hurdle

Trump board may reverse ruling by Obama panel.

Graduate teachNEW YORK — ing assistants at private universities had high hopes 18 months ago when a federal labor board ruled that they had a right to collective bargaining, but after the election of President Donald Trump, some schools are taking another shot at halt- ing the burgeoning unionization movement.

Columbia Unive r sity announced in a universi- ty-wide email Tuesday that the school wouldn’t bargain with the graduate students who voted more than 2 to 1 for union representation, and would instead appeal to a federal court. Yale and Boston College, among others, have also filed legal appeals, rather than begin negotiating with newly unionized students.

It may be a sign that admin- istrators are anticipating that the National Labor Relations Board, now being reconstituted with appointees of the strongly pro-business Repub- lican president, will reverse the decision it made in 2016 and declare that graduate students are not employees after all.

“It’s not a crazy strategy to stall because it is very likely that this board with a number of appointees from Trump will return to the idea that graduate students are primarily students,” said Harry Katz, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Unions have represented teaching and research assistants at public universities for decades, but New York University is the only private university in the U.S. with a collective bargaining agree- ment with graduate students.

Universities have generally argued that even though grad- uate teaching assistants are paid — their mean annual pay was $35,810 in 2016, accord- ing to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — treating them like employees would disrupt the mentoring relationship between budding scholars and the professors supervis- ing their academic pursuits and research.

The NLRB’s position on whether students have a right to unionize has shifted.

In 2004, during the presidency of George W. Bush, a Republican, the board ruled that graduate student instructors are not employees. The board reversed itself in 2016 under President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

The five-member NLRB currently has four members who are split evenly between appointees of Trump and Obama. Trump’s nominee for the fifth seat, management-side labor lawyer John Ring, awaits Senate confirmation.

Chaz Lee, a graduate student in music history at the University of Chicago, said a pro-union vote there in Octo- ber was “a really heartening moment for all of us.”

He had hoped it would lead to better pay and health insur- ance coverage. Many graduate students, some of whom are deep in debt because of high tuition costs, struggle to find affordable housing near the university, he said.

“Some departments give raises; some don’t,” he said. “None of these are enshrined in a contract that ensures that our compensation would go up to stay in line with the cost of living.”

After the unionization vote, the university filed a motion urging the NLRB to reverse its 2016 ruling and once again designate graduate students as students, not workers.

“Our concern here is simply about the potential effects of unionization on our ability to provide our students with the individualized support they need to flourish in their research and teaching,” University of Chicago Execu- tive Vice Provost David Nirenberg said in a letter to grad- uate students.