Graduate students eyeing union lose ruling

A federal labor ruling has dealt a potentially devastating setback to the growing union-organizing movement among graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at some of the nation’s most prestigious private universities.

The National Labor Relations Board declared that those graduate students don’t have legal rights to form unions because they primarily are students, not employees. The decision, quietly released Thursday by the Republican-dominated panel, reverses a position taken by the agency in 2000, when it was controlled by Democrats.

The case stems from a union-organizing campaign by the United Auto Workers involving 450 graduate students working as teaching and research assistants at Brown University. The board’s 3-2 decision applies to all private universities. It figures to halt, or at least severely hamper, efforts to organize graduate students at such institutions as Yale, Tufts, Columbia and Penn.

Ten major private universities had filed amicus briefs in support of Brown’s position.

The ruling is expected to have little or no effect at the nation’s public universities, which are governed by state labor laws.

New York University is the nation’s only private school with graduate students working under a union contract, labor and education officials say.

Graduate students play a pivotal role in higher education, providing a relatively low-cost work force to handle teaching and research duties.

The board’s decisions usually are final, but in some cases they have been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some higher education officials said labor activists may wait to see if the Democrats re-take the White House this fall, bringing labor-friendly appointees who might restore the students’ organizing rights.

Richard Klimmer, an organizer for the American Federation of Teachers working on a union campaign for University of Pennsylvania graduate students, said they would now seek “voluntary recognition” of a union by the university.

Though the board’s ruling rejects the right of graduate students to organize, it does not prohibit such a union if the university agrees to acknowledge it, Klimmer said.

Union leaders expressed anger over the new ruling. “This reflects the Bush administration, and their anti-worker attitude and bias,” said Alan Reuther, legislative director of the UAW in Washington.