NYU Graduate Students Urge Labor-Relations Board to Act on Union Representation

February 3, 2012, 1:41 pm

A delegation of 50 graduate-student workers from New York University traveled by bus to Washington today to deliver a letter to the National Labor Relations Board that asks for a quick decision on their nearly two-year-old petition for an election to vote on union representation. In June a National Labor Relations Board official declared that NYU teaching and research assistants might be formally considered employees, potentially clearing the way for them to unionize by seeking the reversal of a 2004 NLRB decision that denied collective-bargaining rights to graduate students who work at private colleges. In October 2010 a ruling by the NLRB said that graduate teaching and research assistants at NYU deserved a full hearing on their request for a union vote.

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Bernecky

How could any academic be a member of a union?

Seems to me, an academic is an individual in possession of knowledge and seeking more; he’s an academic because, and only as long as, he shares what he’s learned.

It’s presumed that the grad student’s superior, the professor, possesses the knowledge that the grad student (his employee, if you will) seeks. If the grad student doubts that his superior possesses this knowledge, a union–whose purpose is to keep the student in his position–is the last thing that the grad student, or anyone else, needs.
*****

It’s about the value of a contract, to those who are parties to it.

I could as easily have asked what academic is going to remain loyal to his union if he’s offered a position at Scripps Research Institute: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scripps_Research_Institute, on Jupiter Island: http://www.kycbs.net/Jupiter-Island.htm.
katisumas

Graduate students are teaching university courses, they are teaching them as adjuncts except they are also working on their dissertation. Their boss is not a professor but the university that hires and pays them. The profs supervising a dissertation have nothing to do with hiring.

It might come as a surprise to you but such workers do need to eat in order to live, and they need to be alive in order to teach. Oh and they also need some benefits, such as health insurance.,

I suspect you have a handsome salary and good benefits and just happen to like the idea of adjunct/grad students (usually working on their dissertation) not having any. Is this something to do with wanting to pull rank? That’s not very scholarly, you know.

This might come as an even greater surprise to you but the more adjuncts get exploited, the greater the chance of you losing your job. And if you have tenure, have you even counted how many tenure track positions are left in your institution?

If you think that the meanger adjunct salary and tiny extre benefits that a union could negotiate for them, if you think that would keep someone in that postition well….. (words fail me)
davidsherman

Graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants have been unionized in public universities across the U.S. for decades. This is a long-established element of higher education that has vastly improved the quality of the education they provide undergraduates in labs, sections, and so on. When instructors are fairly compensated and have decent medical insurance, their students benefit. It’s time that the law be restored allowing graduate student employees at private universities to bargain collectively as well.
http://twitter.com/M_0NI Monica

Oh..if we could only count the ways that graduate students are abused…YES they need a union.