from the New York Times
Metro Briefings
December 21, 2004
by Steven Greenhouse

MANHATTAN: GRADUATE ASSISTANTS SAID TO BACK UNION A majority of Columbia University's graduate teaching and research assistants have indicated they want to form a union, the New York State attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said yesterday. Mr. Spitzer's office does not have formal authority over recognizing unions, but the students asked Mr. Spitzer's office to count the cards they signed in support of a union. The move was part of a wider campaign of pressure against Columbia. Graduate Student Employees United, a group affiliated with the United Automobile Workers, is seeking to unionize nearly 2,000 graduate assistants at Columbia. But last July, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate assistants at private universities were students, not workers, and therefore did not have the right to form a union, even when a majority wanted one. Despite that ruling, the graduate students' group is seeking to pressure Columbia into recognizing such a union. Susan Brown, a Columbia spokeswoman, said the university was abiding by the N.L.R.B. ruling.

from Crain's New York Business (NewYorkBusiness.com)
December 16, 2004

SPITZER TO SUPPORT COLUMBIA GRAD STUDENTS

Columbia University graduate teaching and research assistants will step up their long battle to organize tomorrow, when state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is expected to certify that a majority have signed cards in support of unionization.

More than 1,500 assistants voted on unionization in 2002, but the uncounted ballots were impounded after the National Labor Relations Board ruled in July of this year that private university assistants are not employees who can unionize, but students. That decision overturned an NLRB ruling made four years earlier under the Clinton administration.

Mr. Spitzer is expected to urge the administration to bargain with them, according to the graduate students. A similar action was taken at Yale University on Dec. 14, when Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz certified that a majority of that university’s teaching assistants had signed union membership cards.

On December 17, 2004, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer certified that a majority of graduate teaching and research assistants at Columbia University have signed cards in support of unionization.

Teaching and Research Assistants voted to unionize in 2002 with Graduate Student Employees United (GSEU/UAW-Local 2110). However, two years later their ballots were thrown out after the National Labor Relations Board, currently dominated by Republican appointees, reversed earlier precedents and ruled that teaching assistants and research assistants are not employees.

Referring to the NLRB decision Spitzer said, "The decision is wrong. The Labor Board is doing everything - left, right, and center - designed to undercut workers' rights to organize."

In a light moment, after signing off on a document verifying the results of the card count, Spitzer joked, "It wasn't even close. There are no hanging chads. There won't have to be a recount. The overwhelming majority have signed UAW cards." Spitzer added that he will send the results of the card count to Columbia University and urge them to recognize the union.

With the route of an NLRB-conducted election closed off to the teaching and research assistants, the Union is now pressing Columbia to agree to recognize the union based on a union membership card count that demonstrates majority support for the union and to bargain a contract.

Attorney General Spitzer was joined by Phil Wheeler, Regional Director for the UAW and members of Graduate Student Employees United (GSEU/UAW), the group of teaching and research assistants working to form a union for TAs and RAs at Columbia.

"Tomorrow I will grade 25 term papers from the class I teach and I am going into debt on my salary of $18,000 a year," said Dehlia Harris, a graduate Teaching Assistant in the Philosophy Department. "It is time for Columbia to recognize that we work and bargain with us over fair wages, equal pay for equal work, job descriptions, childcare for working parents, and healthcare benefits."

Wheeler pledged UAW support, "The TAs and RAs will decide their next steps, and our whole International Union will stand by them. We aren't going to sit idle while these workers are denied their rights by this very rich and powerful university."

Read press from the event here.

Click here for a copy of our certification.

Click here to read Attorney General Spitzer's letter to Provost Alan Brinkley.