Why Professors Should Support Graduate-Student Unions

By Tamara Joseph and Jon Curtiss

The National Labor Relations Board's recent filing of a complaint against Yale University, charging it with illegal retaliation last year against striking graduate-teaching assistants, opens a new chapter in the history of graduate students' efforts to form unions. Three such unions won recognition during the 1970s, and a second wave of unionizing efforts has been building since 1990. Witness the recent decisions to unionize at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the University of