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Union Supporters Will Not Appeal NLRB Ruling By Amba Datta and Katie Goldstein Columbia Daily Spectator March 6, 2002
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Graduate Student Employees United, in affiliation with the United Auto Workers
Local 2110, announced on Monday that it would not appeal the ruling from
a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board entitling Columbia
teaching and research assistants to unionize and expanding the size of the
union bargaining unit. Columbia administrators had anticipated that GSEU might appeal the NLRB decision because the UAW had advocated a unit restricted to instructional positions on the Morningside campus. The Feb. 12 NLRB ruling on members of the unit who are eligible to vote in upcoming union elections, included both teaching and research assistants from Morningside, the Health Sciences campus, and the Lamont-Doherty observatories. The group of eligible voters now stands at approximately 1900-2000 teaching and research assistants. The decision not to appeal reflected GSEU's optimism about the upcoming election, said GSEU organizer and history department graduate student Beverly Gage. "We really think that we have a strong, strong position and lots of support on every campus and in every department," Gage said. GSEU's decision not to appeal does not preclude the University from reviewing the NLRB Regional Director's decision, however. Recent e-mails and letters from University President George Rupp and Provost Jonathan Cole indicate that the University maintains its opposition to defining its teaching and research assistants as employees. Rupp, commenting live on WKCR almost two weeks ago, said that Columbia's teaching and research assistants were primarily students and not employees. "I think to treat students as if they were primarily workers is to try to put a square peg into a round hole or a round peg into a square hole. It just doesn't work," he said. Members of GSEU sent a letter to Rupp on Monday calling on the University not to appeal. "Our purpose in communicating this decision not to appeal in advance of the deadline is to urge the administration not to appeal," the letter said. "It is time to bring an end to lengthy and costly litigation and to allow the will of the majority to be heard." |
The University, if it appeals, will do so with regards to the question of
employee status and not on the issue of the scope of the bargaining unit.
The deadline for appeals is today. GSEU expects that Columbia will appeal
the decision.
GSEU could have appealed the inclusion
of certain populations in the unit, including research assistants, whose
addition to the unit greatly expands its size and who were not included
in the union's petition. Other alternatives could have included an appeal
for separate bargaining units for different campuses. At the meeting, the group emphasized
their desire for the University to stop fighting the graduate students'
efforts to unionize and to end spending on legal fees. Peter Lamphere,
CC '02 and a member of the International Socialist Organization, questioned
Rupp about the graduate students' democratic right to unionize. |