By Audrey Williams June

Graduate students at New York University have asked the institution to voluntarily recognize their union. Or, say the students, they will take their case to a newly-constituted National Labor Relations Board, which has recently signaled that it might restore collective-bargaining rights for teaching and research assistants at private colleges.

"We're not entirely confident that the university will go ahead and do the right thing," said Kari Hensley, a member of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee. "That's why we're planning to go through the legal channels that are available to us. We're very confident that the NLRB is ready to reverse the injustice."

The group has given the university one week to act.

In 2001, New York University was the first private institution to recognize a graduate-employee union, following a labor-board ruling the previous year that said the university's teaching assistants were workers with full bargaining rights. The union negotiated its first contract, which included a 40-percent pay increase, fully paid health insurance, and a grievance procedure.

But when that contract expired in 2005, the university declined to renew it. That's because in 2004 the labor board, with new members and ruling in a different case, reversed the 2000 decision. Teaching assistants at private colleges are students, not workers, and therefore can't join unions, the 2004 ruling held. NYU agreed. Graduate workers went on a months-long strike, but administrators didn't budge.

Now, union advocates are ready to try again.

On Monday, a group of graduate students, officials of the United Automobile Workers, a City Council representative, and a Congressman met with university officials to present proof that more than half of 1,800 or so teaching and research assistant at the university had signed cards saying they wanted to be represented by the UAW. They showed the university officials a letter from the American Arbitration Association certifying those results.

Organizers have said if NYU doesn't recognize the union within a week, they will ask the labor board to hold a formal election, a move that could pave the way for the new board to reverse the 2004 ruling.

NYU officials didn't respond to a request for comment, but their position seems clear. The university has maintained that graduate students are not employees. And about a year ago it announced a plan to turn most paid assistantships into fellowships, while allowing graduate students who teach to join the adjuncts union on the campus. Supporters of a graduate-student union viewed the institution's actions as an attempt to undermine their efforts to be recognized as a separate group.

The labor board has two new members now, both appointed by President Obama. And Wilma B. Liebman, who is now the board's chair, wrote the dissenting opinion in the 2004 ruling that resulted in the disbandment of the union at NYU.

"We believe that her opinion has not changed," says Ms. Hensley, a third-year Ph.D. student in the department of media, culture, and communication. And that, she says, is why the union sees the new labor board as an ally.