TAs, Graduate Students Entitled to Unionize

By Amba Datta

Spectator Senior Staff Writer

Columbia Daily Spectator

February 13, 2002

 

The wait is over.

In a decision that upholds precedent and lends a legal stamp of validity to the teaching assistant unionization movement at Columbia, the Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled yesterday that teaching and research assistants at Columbia are employees of the University entitled to a union representation election.

The decision overturns the University's argument that its teaching assistants are primarily students and not employees of the University and is a victory for Columbia's Graduate Student Employees United, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers.

"It's fantastic that they've ruled that we are employees," said Beverly Gage, a GSEU organizer and graduate student in the history department, who said the decision demonstrated clearly that Columbia teaching assistants were employees within the definition provided by the National Labor Relations Act.

The ruling means that a secret-ballot election, which would determine whether a union would represent members of the union bargaining unit in contract negotiations with the University administration, will be held at Columbia. No date is currently set for an election, but they are traditionally held within 30 days of a decision.

This is not the first time teaching assistants at a private university have been ruled employees entitled to union representation.

Yesterday's decision upholds the precedent set at Brown University and New York University, which two weeks ago concluded the first contract ever negotiated with a graduate student union at a private university.

In an e-mail to the Columbia community informing them of the decision yesterday evening, University President George Rupp said the University did not feel that NYU's situation was analogous to Columbia's.

"We disagree with this ruling because there are many significant differences between graduate education at Columbia and NYU," Rupp wrote.		 Opening his e-mail with the assertion that "Our student teaching and research assistants are first and foremost students," continuing with the statement that "We contend that collective bargaining does not make sense for students because we hold that they are not employees," Rupp left no doubt the University maintains its original stance of opposition to the unionization movement.

The University has the option of appealing the decision to the NLRB in Washington, a course of action that both NYU--whose appeal was overturned--and Brown followed.

Rupp said in his e-mail that the University had not decided whether to appeal the ruling. When asked in union hearings last week if the University would appeal a ruling in favor of the GSEU, Dean of the Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences Henry Pinkham said, "Speaking for myself, I would certainly think that the University is going to appeal."

Rupp also indicated the University was pleased the NLRB did not accept the union's bargaining unit, which would have included only teaching assistants at the Morningside campus.

The NLRB ruled for an expanded bargaining unit that would include teaching and research assistants of GSAS, the Health Sciences campus, the Graduate School of Business, the Law School, Lamont-Doherty observatories, and, in a unique move, all teaching and research assistants of those schools who had worked in the last 24 months, even if not currently employed.

Assistants at the School of International and Public Affairs were noticeably excluded from the bargaining unit, but the ruling also held that undergraduates are members of the bargaining unit. Undergraduates were not a part of the bargaining unit at NYU or Brown University.

Both the University and union could appeal the specific composition of the bargaining unit. Gage said last night the union had not decided on its course of action.