Reeling from a serious legal blow to the graduate student union movement, graduate student employees from around the United States and Canada called for increased national coordination at this weekend's conference at Columbia University.

Roughly 130 graduate students from as many as 20 different colleges, including NYU, attended the 13th annual Conference of the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions held this weekend at Columbia's Teacher's College.

The three-day conference came just one week after the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of Brown University and overturned its 2000 decision that recognized the right of graduate employees at private colleges to unionize.

"The Brown decision has brought an enormous amount of focus to every conversation here," said Michael Mullins, a Yale graduate employee union member. "It made us realize we have to mobilize on a common ground."

Michael de Palm, newly elected chair of United Auto Workers Local 2110, which represents NYU's graduate students, said that it was no surprise that the NLRB decision was handed down on July 13, "when campuses are at their least organized."

The ruling's timing helped union advocates by providing a rallying point for this year's convention, de Palm said.

Anger over the decision fueled a last-minute attendance boost, giving this year's convention the highest attendance of any in recent memory, Local 2110 organizer Eden Schulz said.

At the conference, attendees shared their experiences of mobilizing graduate unions and attended workshops on topics such as strikes, anti-union campaigns, contract negotiations and building a national union campaign.

The perception among the union community that college administrations are coordinating regionally and nationally on union-busting strategies has led to an increased movement toward a national union response.

At one workshop, a graduate student called for a one-day national teaching assistant strike.

But Gorkem Kuterdam of the University of Washington said that a strike exclusive to the Ivy Leagues would send a stronger message, because graduate students would focus their efforts and "fight them right where they thought they beat us."

Carl Levine, legal counsel for Graduate Student Employees United and United Auto Workers, said the Brown decision "didn't change the landscape too much," because the ruling did not come as a surprise to most in the union community.

"The best way for us to change this law is to organize," Levine said.

Coordinated unionization drives have been successful in the past. Administrators in the University of California system did not recognize the right of graduate students to unionize until all eight schools in the system had overwhelming majorities in favor of unionization, Kuterdam said.

"A lot of our members are outraged," NYU doctoral candidate Elena Gorfinkel said. "And we're not going anywhere."