TRACBRA: Background on Collective Bargaining for Graduate Employees

From CGEU

Background on Collective Bargaining for Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants

The Work

• At public and private universities, teaching assistants and research assistants teach stand-alone courses, grade papers and exams, lead discussion sections, conduct undergraduate science laboratory classes, and serve as front-line researchers in nearly every university research laboratory.
• For example at the University of California, teaching assistants provide over 60% of classroom instruction to undergraduates. At Columbia University, TAs teach more than half of the core-curriculum and RAs bring in millions of dollars in research funding.

The Unions

• TA and RA unions have become increasingly common at large research universities since they first began in the 1960’s.
• Over 60 universities have recognized unions for teaching assistants and/or research assistants.
• Many of these institutions are top research universities – University of California, Berkeley; University of Michigan; University of Washington; University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• Major unions such as the UAW, AFT, NEA, CWA, UNITE HERE and UE all have local unions or active organizing efforts.

Origin of the Current Problem

• In 1999, TAs and RAs at NYU formed a union becoming the first union of its kind at a private university.
• After a lengthy National Labor Relations Board process, including an appeal by NYU to the NLRB in Washington, a bi-partisan panel of the NLRB issued a unanimous ruling in 2000 that teaching assistants and research assistants were employees with the right to collective bargaining.
• The New York Times and other publications published editorials in support of the decision. (“Unions and Universities” New York Times, November 25, 2000.)
• The UAW-supported organizing effort was successful and ultimately led to a widely-praised, historic first contract.
• TAs and RAs at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Tufts, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania invigorated grassroots union organizing campaigns after the NYU ruling.

NLRB Flip-Flops

• After NRLB elections at Brown, Columbia, Tufts and the University of Pennsylvania, university administrations appealed to the NLRB in Washington hoping to overturn the original NYU ruling.
• In 2003, years after some of the elections, the NLRB issued a split 3-2 decision – the Brown decision -- stripping collective bargaining rights from student employees. (Thousands of ballots cast in the NLRB elections were destroyed.)

Recent Events

• In 2005, the NYU administration refused to negotiate a second contract with the UAW local union representing TAs and RAs.
• NYU TAs and RAs went on strike but did not prevail in bringing the university administration back to the bargaining table.
• Support for the union at NYU and other campuses has not waned. In the Spring of 2007, more TAs and RAs at NYU than ever before signed union authorization cards. UAW supporters, running as a slate, swept elections to the “company union” that NYU created to replace the UAW local union, but thus far the NYU administration has refused to engage in real negotiations with the new company union.
• The absurdity of the Brown decision was highlighted by a 2007 NLRB decision finding RAs at the State University of New York (SUNY) to be employees covered by the NLRA. The only difference between the SUNY RAs and RAs and TAs at Brown was that the SUNY RAs were not paid directly by the University, but by the private SUNY Research Foundation.

Common Employer Objections to TA/RA Unions

“This union will interfere with academic freedom.”	We don’t bargain over academic issues. Pay, healthcare, and protections against discrimination and harassment don’t undermine academic freedom. Management maintains the right to determine what is taught. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the premiere defender of academic freedom, endorses collective bargaining rights for TAs and RAs.
“The work of TAs and RAs is training.”	There is nothing in the NLRA that excludes workers in training from collective bargaining. Apprentices of all types have engaged in collective bargaining for years. The universities rely on TAs and RAs to carry out the core mission of the university – teaching undergraduate and doing basic research. If they did not have TAs and RAs, they would hire other people to do the work.
“Work as a TA is a degree requirement.”	Universities have tried to blur the lines between the role of students and the role of employees in an effort to undermine labor law. Since the NYU decision, many universities have created a requirement to work as a TA, but teaching has very little to do with the career path of many Ph.D.s. For example, in many programs less than half of the Ph.D. candidates in the sciences will go on to university teaching.
“Being a TA/RA is a form of financial aid.”	The IRS and other federal agencies treat TA and RA positions and payment like any other job. TAs and RAs pay taxes on their income.
“Unions are okay for public universities, but private universities are different.”	The work and the academic structures are the same in private and public universities. Additionally, state labor laws that allow TA/RA collective bargaining aren’t really that different from the NLRA. Increasingly public and private universities are funded similarly because of less direct government aid to public universities. Some state labor laws prohibit strikes but not all do.
“They can’t unionize because some funding comes from federal Work Study or federal grants.”	The source of the funding is irrelevant. There are thousands of union members in all kinds of settings, including universities, whose positions are federally-funded.
“This union will undermine the faculty’s ability to mentor grad students.”	Experience in public universities is to the contrary. Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin are among the best universities and they have had unions for years! A published, peer-reviewed study of that question, based on surveys of faculty, found that the unions had a neutral or positive effect on relations between faculty and advisees. (“9 of 10 Professors Say Grad-Student Unions Don’t Strain Advisor-Advisee Ties,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1999.)