RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, 260,000 teaching and research assistants are currently identified by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the higher educational instructional workforce; and

WHEREAS, in 2000 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in a unanimous decision, held that graduate employees at New York University (NYU) are employees entitled to organize for collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act (Act), prompting collective bargaining campaigns in a number of private universities; and

WHEREAS, on July 13, 2004, the NLRB by a 3-2 vote along partisan lines overruled the NYU decision in the case of Brown University, ruling that graduate teaching and research assistants are not employees eligible to unionize under the act; and

WHEREAS, in the words of the dissenting members of the Board, this decision is "woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality. . . seeing the academic world as somehow removed from the economic realm that labor law addresses - as if there was no room in the ivory tower for a sweatshop":

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Council of the American Sociological Association states publicly that

1) we deplore the decision of the NLRB in this matter, which affects the academic workplaces where our members are employed,

2) we affirm our support for the collective bargaining rights of graduate student teaching and research assistants, in sociology and in other disciplines, and

3) we urge university administrators to remain neutral toward graduate student employees' decision to form a union, and to voluntarily recognize those that show majority support.