New Labor Regulations to Affect Student Unions
Many student unions, including NYU’s, are taking steps to preempt this proposal.
The National Labor Relations Board announced last week that they are pursuing a new proposal that would prevent student workers, such as graduate teaching assistants, at private universities from forming or joining a union.
The proposal would achieve this by classifying student workers as students, rather than workers. The board argues “that the relationship these students have with their school is predominately educational rather than economic.”
This is not the first time federal protections surrounding student workers have changed — in 2000, labor law protections were extended to student workers (under a Democrat-majority NLRB). In 2004 a Republican-majority board removed those protections, and in 2016 the Democrat-majority board reinstated them. The current proposal, according to NLRB Chairman John Ring, is designed to be more difficult for later administrations to undo, and “bring stability to this important area of federal labor law.” The proposal is supported by the three Republican board members (all Trump appointees), with the one Democratic board member dissenting.
The rule could have lasting ramifications — encouraging student workers to pursue collective bargaining methods other than unions, or simply not at all. Instead of submitting representation petitions to the NLRB, several such petitions were withdrawn in 2018, with student organizers opting instead to negotiate directly with their universities. According to Bloomberg Law, NYU has already agreed to collective contracts with their graduate student unions, along with Tufts, American, Brandeis, and The New School. The NYU grad student union, GSOC-UAW Local 2110, has existed since 1998, and their most recent contract, signed in 2015, will be in effect through 2020.
Correction: September 24, 2019.
An earlier version stated the GSOC-UAW Local 2110 contract was signed in 2005, not 2015. In addition, the subtitle has been clarified to specify student unions, not schools, who are against the new proposal.
Update: September 24, 2019.
A statement from the graduate student union is attached below.
