TAs to Vote on Union Issue This Wednesday

By Amba Datta

Spectator Senior Staff Writer

Columbia Daily Spectator

March 11, 2002

 

Earl Hall will play host to a new group of students on Wednesday morning as teaching and research assistants on the Morningside campus vote on student unionization at Columbia University.

Votes cast in this election may ultimately decide the question of union representation, but they will not be counted until the University's appeal of the NLRB regional director's decision is heard.

In its appeal Columbia will try to show that the NYU decision, which made NYU the first and only private university to recognize its graduate student union, is not applicable to Columbia. While the Board generally follows precedent, the January addition of two Bush appointees to the Board may alter the case.

But voters will still come to the polls on Wednesday to decide by a simple majority whether the United Auto Workers Local 2110 will represent the expanded bargaining unit of 1,900 to 2,000 teaching and research assistants at Columbia.

The University has notified the bargaining unit of its eligibility via e-mail. Eligible voters who have not been contacted can still vote on the day of the election but will have to show after the election that they are members of the bargaining unit mistakenly left off the list of eligible voters.

GSEU member and History Department graduate student Beverly Gage thinks voters will vote with a combination of ideological opinions and substantive knowledge in mind. GSEU members have committed themselves to working for higher stipends, comprehensive health care coverage rather than the basic coverage the University provides, a grievance procedure, and workload guidelines. Gage said that specifics will be negotiated if a union is chosen at Columbia.

Recent statements by University President George Rupp and Provost Jonathan Cole asserted that Columbia offers more competitive funding packages for its students than unionized universities do. Attributing recent stipend increases to the threat of unionization, GSEU also says on its website that "[t]aking into account the high cost of living in Manhattan, a graduate student here at Columbia would have to earn $26,224 to make the equivalent of the average stipend at University of California, Berkeley [$15,385]."

In recent weeks, the unionization debate has become increasingly heated with letters and university-wide e-mails from high-level administrators, flyering from GSEU and Graduate Students Against Unionization, and increased organizing by union members.

Despite the escalating inflow of unionization information and Gage's expectation of a high turnout, there may still be eligible voters who will not cast votes in the election. Apathy among the voting population is more likely to benefit the union, which has organized its supporters effectively following the NLRB decision.		 Former Graduate Student Advisory Council chair, GSAU member, and Sociology Department graduate student Nina Bambina said last month that GSAU was hampered by a lack of resources as compared to GSEU/UAW, but that GSAU was devoting more time to organization in the crucial weeks before the election.

GSEU is likely to draw most of its support from the Morningside campus because its organizing efforts, since they began a year ago, have been concentrated there for the longest time. Gage said GSEU has a broad base of support across different departments.

It is likely, however, that humanities and social sciences departments will tend to support unionization; those in the sciences --often because their graduate students receive higher stipends from outside grants-- have traditionally been considered less likely to support unionization.

The Health Sciences campus, with its large population of research assistants, has recently been the focus of debate over unionization. Gage said GSEU was confident of support among research assistants and that the union's recent decision not to appeal the NLRB regional director's decision was an indication of that optimism.

Only the election will show how Health Sciences votes on unionization. What is clear is that the two campuses have some integral differences. Health Sciences students, according to Marni Hall, a student in the Institute of Human Nutrition at Health Sciences and member of the University Senate's Student Caucus, are more likely to have a better relationship with the administration than students downtown.

"I think there's a better interaction with the administration," said Hall. "There's less distrust."

Hall said questions from uptown students may boil down to the issue of what unionization will bring to students uptown and how a bargaining unit will represent them.

Health Sciences stipends, according to Hall, are approximately $23,000 this year. In general, she said, "I think there's a perception that the downtown students have more to gain than we do."

That does not mean, Hall said, that uptown students will vote anti-union, and many have shown interest in helping students downtown, but concrete gains in terms of stipend increases may be less of an incentive for Health Sciences students than for Morningside students.

The speed with which Health Sciences students have had to familiarize themselves with the issue has also distinguished the organization of the Morningside campus from the one uptown.

"I have a hard time calling [the election]. ...A reason that it's not so clear is that it's been such a short time," said Hall.