NYU worker delegation asks NLRB to decide quickly

The chant summed it up: “Two years is too long to wait.” 

That was the message a busload of New York University (NYU) graduate student workers and supporters took to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington on Feb. 3.

The group of teaching, research and graduate assistants, members of Graduate Student Organizing Committee/UAW (GSOC/UAW) Local 2110, traveled 250 miles to deliver a letter to the NLRB requesting a decision is made on their nearly two-year-old petition for an election.

The group traveled 250 miles to deliver a letter to the NLRB requesting a decision is made on their nearly two-year-old petition for a union election.

The workers teach undergraduates, conduct valuable research and perform other functions for their employer, NYU.

They used the chant to help explain their situation during a news conference following the delivery of their letter to the labor board.

“These academic workers are willing to get on a bus and deliver their message in person. That is what democracy looks like,” said UAW President Bob King. “They represent an important part of our union membership and a vital movement infused with energy and determination. They deserve to have their fundamental rights restored.”

In May 2010, GSOC/UAW filed a petition for union representation. Several months later, the NYU graduate workers won a major victory when the NLRB ordered a new hearing on whether they have the same rights as other workers do on their jobs – the right to vote for a union and have collective bargaining rights.

Last June, acting NLRB Regional Director Elbert Tellem accepted the key claim presented by the teaching and research assistants that they are university employees. However, he was constrained from ordering an election because of a 2004 NLRB Brown University ruling that graduate workers are students without the same rights as other workers.

Now, the nearly 1,800 teaching and research assistants want the NLRB to decide soon so they can vote during the spring semester.

“Graduate student workers are a part of a growing movement and have a long history of having union rights at public universities across the country,” said UAW Region 9A Director Julie Kushner.

Kushner: Time to put politics aside and let these workers have their right to a union.

“After almost two years, a decision should be put on the fast track so that these workers can exercise their democratic right to form their union. It is time to put politics aside and allow these workers to move forward quickly.”

“We have worked hard, been accountable to workplace procedures and rules, paid taxes on our earnings and like other workers, supported our families and our communities,” said Neil Myler, a Linguistics Department teaching assistant.

The workers teach undergraduates, conduct valuable research and perform other functions for their employer, NYU.

Having established the right to have a union, in a landmark NLRB decision in 2000 involving graduate employees at NYU, these same workers were stripped of their collective bargaining  rights by the NLRB under the Bush administration in a case deciding the union petition for a similar group of workers at Brown.

In 2004, in a narrow, 3-2 partisan ruling, Republican appointees to the NLRB broke with established precedent and overruled the 2000 NLRB NYU case. The decision resulted in the destruction of impounded ballots that were never counted after democratic elections among Brown’s teaching and research assistants and those at other private universities, including Columbia, Tufts and the University of Pennsylvania. The NYU administration refused to recognize the previously NLRB-certified UAW graduate employee union after the Brown decision, with which it had successfully negotiated a contract, and to bargain a successor agreement to the one which expired in 2005.

The UAW represents more than 45,000 workers in higher education, including teaching assistants, research assistants, academic administrators, full-time and adjunct faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and clerical, technical and professional employees.

Sandra Davis