One Vote for Unionization

Staff Editorial

Columbia Daily Spectator

March 14, 2002

 

On Feb. 14, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that teaching and research assistants are employees of Columbia University. The ruling said that graduate employees are entitled to union representation in order to bargain with their employers for benefits including health care, increased stipends, and childcare. Spectator endorses the formation of a graduate student union at Columbia to be represented by the Local 2110 chapter of the UAW and urges eligible students to vote for the union. It cannot be stressed enough that teaching and research assistants are salaried workers who provide the University with valuable services.

A union would help graduate students negotiate higher stipends and better health care coverage, including childcare. Although Columbia pays higher stipends than its downtown neighbor NYU, it is still expensive to live in New York, and housing is scarce and costly. Health insurance coverage--which currently differs from department to department--can cost several hundred dollars a month when not provided by an employer. The high cost of health care is a burden particularly for the many graduate employees with children. A union would work on behalf of graduate employees to obtain the services and resources they need at a reasonable cost.

Union opponents --including some students and top administrators such as President George Rupp and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Henry Pinkham-- have expressed concern that a union would interfere with academics. Although graduate students have academic concerns, the desire for a union focuses on labor and just compensation for that labor. If students vote for union representation, then the union's contract with the University will likely resemble the one brokered at NYU in late February, which excludes the union from academic matters and instead focuses on stipend increases and full health care coverage for graduate students. As the NYU contract illustrates, academic concerns and teaching are two separate issues. A similar contract may improve the relationship between professors and their graduate assistants: If the union negotiates with the University, then students can discuss academic issues with their professors without the issue of work conditions hanging over them.		 Relationships between students and professors are especially important at the graduate level, where professors serve as both mentors and bosses. Since a union would negotiate solely on matters of labor, there is no reason to believe that the academic relationship between professors and students would change significantly or at all. Moreover, if a teaching or research assistant felt overworked, then they would have the union on their side, just as professors can count on support from their department or the administration of their school.

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1999 and cited on the GSEU website, a Tufts University study of five campuses with graduate unions revealed 92 percent of faculty members believed unionization did not make it more difficult to instruct graduate students. The institutions studied--among them the University of Michigan, SUNY Buffalo, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst--are public, but like Columbia, they are large, prestigious research universities with many graduate students. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a union would have similar effects on student-faculty relations here at Columbia.

The long track record of graduate student unions at other universities --such unions have existed since 1969-- shows that the idea is both feasible and worthwhile. Graduate unions have tripled their numbers in the past decade alone. As employees of the University, graduate students are entitled to representation by a union. Currently, they do not have access to a forum where they can negotiate with the University about the valuable labor they provide. Students often find themselves mystified by Columbia's labyrinthine bureaucracy, and GSAC, which handles academic issues, is not able to tackle economic concerns. A graduate student union would give teaching and research assistants the power to negotiate with the University on a more equal basis. Graduate students need a powerful voice when dealing with the administration--a voice only a union can provide.