Union? No Thanks.

Five graduate students gather in a Columbia University lounge

ALSO SEE: Recent Activity by TA Unions and Would-Be Unions Colloquy Live: Read the transcript of a live, online discussion with Lennart Erickson, a graduate student at Brown University and an organizer of At What Cost?, an anti-union group there.

on a rainy Thursday morning in March. They and 1,500 of their fellow teaching and research assistants will vote today on whether to form a union. They speak in hushed voices. They look over their shoulders when strangers walk into the room. "We better be careful," one whispers.

These nervous students aren't planning a workers' revolt. They are the core of Graduate Students Against Unionization, a group of 50 or so students that has been campaigning against the United Auto Workers' attempt to organize teaching assistants here. After some uncomfortable run-ins with union supporters, they are wary about who might be listening. In 2002, when graduate students everywhere seem to be unionizing, the real radicals are the ones who think a TA union is a lousy idea.

Their numbers are small. They have little structure and even less money. The unions consider them turncoats parroting the administration's arguments. But these anti-union groups are cropping up around the country. Brown University has At What Cost? Up the road in Massachusetts, there's Why Have a Union at Tufts?, and, in Philadelphia, it's Penn Graduate Students Against Unionization. At Yale, GASO, which doesn't stand for anything, bills itself as a "nonorganization." But the group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign clearly has the best acronym: Saturn -- Students Against This Union Representation Nonsense.

In an evolving higher-education landscape where teaching assistants do more work, stay enrolled longer, and face a dogfight for scarce jobs, joining unions to negotiate for higher wages and better benefits is attractive to many of them. About two dozen such unions around the country now represent almost 40,000 teaching and research assistants -- more than double the number that were organized in 1995.

But it was the National Labor Relations Board ruling at New York University in 2000 that really sparked a new round of organizing efforts. That decision gave graduate assistants at private institutions the right to unionize, leading to campaigns at Brown, Columbia, Tufts, and the University of Pennsylvania. New union drives are starting at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Harvard University, while students at Syracuse University are looking into unionizing.

Other than repeated setbacks at the University of Minnesota -- where unions have lost three elections, most recently in 1999 -- TA unions have come out on top at the ballot box. Many have had resounding victories, like the 290-16 margin at Temple University last year.

But, if you listen carefully at elite private institutions, you will hear that not everyone wants to wear the union label. Following the universities' appeals to the NLRB regarding unionization elections at Brown and Columbia, the ballots remain sealed. But if they ever get counted, they could help determine the future of this movement. Columbia's anti-union students are pleased that more than 80 percent of the eligible voters turned out, believing that the higher turnout indicates that more than just strong union supporters voted.

At Brown, the anti-union group made thorough department-by-department calculations about the 455 voters in the December election, estimating that the union lost by 55 votes. If that is true, it could prove a serious blow to organizing efforts elsewhere. And, even if the union won by a close vote, it shows that graduate students, at least at places like Brown and Columbia, are divided over whether forming a union makes any sense.

'Vote No!'

At Columbia, the anti-union group tackles election day in March with an unusual mix of detachment and enthusiasm. Sarah Shuwairi and Jennifer L. Foray cast their ballots and then run back to Ms. Foray's apartment to get a freshly spray-painted banner. They form an odd duo. Ms. Shuwairi is the bubbly psychology student who is constantly bumping into friends and acquaintances. A history student who dresses all in black, Ms. Foray is the foul-mouthed, quick-witted one.

As they walk along Amsterdam Avenue in the light rain, they mock the union, joking about what they would like a contract to give them: warmer socks, bigger offices. They laugh about being Jedi knights, battling the union's Darth Vader.

Inside Ms. Foray's apartment (a pleasant university two-bedroom that rents for less than $1,200 a month -- a fraction of what the place would cost without Columbia's help), Ms. Shuwairi opens her backpack and pulls out a crumpled union flyer she ripped from the wall that morning. "We pull down theirs now that they are pulling down ours," she says.

Ms. Foray gathers up the sheet on which she has already painted a simple message for Columbia's graduate students: "Vote No!" "I thought 'F the union' was too strong," she says.

Over at Ms. Shuwairi's apartment (another university apartment where she pays just $650 for half of a two-bedroom one block from campus), the pair pin wooden spoons to the bottom of the banner to keep it from blowing in the wind. They stand on the toilet to drape it out the bathroom window, letting it dangle so it can be seen from the TA union office, which happens to be across the street.

Back in the kitchen, grinning at their success, they make a pot of coffee and nibble at Mint Milanos. While her two cats climb on the table, Ms. Shuwairi keeps pulling back the curtain to peek at the union staff across the street. Ms. Foray laughs. "You are the most paranoid subversive ever," she says.

Organizing the Anti-Organizers

The epicenter of the anti-union movement is a third-floor apartment in an old white house in Providence, R.I. It is the home of Lennart Erickson, an economics graduate student and one of the leaders of At What Cost?, the group of students who campaigned against the UAW at Brown. Previously, his only connection to the UAW was going to elementary school across the street from a General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich. A year ago, he knew little about union elections and labor law, but since then he has become an expert and informal consultant to several other anti-union groups, visiting with students opposed to unions at Penn, Columbia, and Tufts. "I'm not upset that people support unionization," he says, sitting barefoot in his apartment. "There are good reasons for it, but I was disappointed at the reluctance to discuss it in a scholarly debate."

Mr. Erickson and his fellow anti-unionists want the students to have a chance to consider the idea of what a union means. Since the NYU decision, the union's tactic has been to move quickly, he argues, and claim overwhelming support from students. "They wanted to have a very emotional campaign that pitted graduate students against the administration," he says.

In speaking with other anti-union groups, he tries to give them confidence. This is not inevitable, he says. You are not alone. You can defeat the union, but you need an organized opposition, someone who can explain why students might be opposed, not just why the administration hates the idea.

While administrators focus on how a union might harm the academic environment, student opponents emphasize a host of different reasons why unions may not work. They don't like the confrontational relationship that is part of collective bargaining. They worry about paying dues (1 to 2 percent of their salaries) to an international union and getting little in return. They say the unionization proponents haven't worked with the existing student organizations.

They bristle at the unions' standard organizing tactic of meeting people two-on-one in their labs or offices. They say the elections have excluded too many graduate students, such as researchers in certain fields, who will be affected by the outcome. For some, it is a fight against the United Auto Workers, which has found graduate school to be fertile organizing ground while the union loses members in other industries. But some students, concerned by the union's stance on environmental and immigration issues, believe the UAW should stick to making cars and trucks. Some don't think federal labor law can really be applied to their situation. Others agree they should have the right to vote on unionization. They just think everyone should vote no.

"There's no question that we work," Mr. Erickson says. "The question is are we employees, and legally I'm now coming down on the side of that we're not employees."

These anti-union leaders come from across the political spectrum, with several of them quick to highlight their liberal credentials and their union families. This fight, they say, isn't a battle against unions in general -- it's just about this type of union for these students.

Several universities facing union drives have recently increased the stipends and health benefits they offer graduate assistants. Administrators generally claim that the improvements have nothing to do with the union rallies and more with staying competitive with other institutions. But even students opposed to unionization acknowledge the leverage an organizing drive gives students.

"I would be naive to say this hasn't applied pressure to the university," says Nina Bambina, a former chair of the Graduate Student Advisory Council and student in the sociology department at Columbia. "It has certainly affected their willingness to give more." Why not keep that leverage without paying union dues? she asks. The administrators are "afraid of us. I say, vote down the union and make them happy. The threat of unionization will still be hanging over them. Let's stay in the land of ambiguity and use this power."

Doing the Dean's Bidding?

Beverly Gage, a history graduate student at Columbia and leader of Graduate Student Employees United, dismisses Graduate Students Against Unionization as a "pretty small" group that does little more than stick posters around campus. "They've worked with the administration," she says. "They've been quite close to the administration." It is an argument that the anti-union forces at nearly every campus have heard: They are really just toadies of the administration being used to provide cover for the institutional argument.

The opponents adamantly disagree. "This is just ridiculous," says Giovanni Ruffini, a Columbia history student and leader of the anti-union effort there. "If the university endorsed unionization, I would still come out against unionization."

The anti-union group had two meetings with Henry C. Pinkham, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, during which they say he helped them understand the process, nothing more. "We don't have a red phone to Pinkham's bathroom," says Ms. Foray.

At Brown, Mr. Erickson says his group got similar explanations of labor law from the administration. He defiantly rebuts the idea that At What Cost? is a bunch of stooges. "We were not founded by the administration," he says. "We got no support from the administration, no logistical support, no money. We were not promised anything, even obliquely. The administration never told us to do anything, never told us not to do anything. They never asked us to report on any other students. They never made any promises about what would happen."

Perhaps the biggest difference between students who want a union and those who don't is how they feel about graduate school. The students opposed to the union drives don't feel oppressed. They feel lucky -- lucky to be at a top university, saying it is a privilege to get an education without paying for it. And, at least at Columbia, many of the students aren't living hand to mouth. Ms. Shuwairi will use some of her $16,000 stipend to take a cruise to the Bahamas this summer. Just after the election in March, Mr. Ruffini took a 10-day trip to London.

Privates Versus Publics

Graduate-student unions are three decades old, with long histories at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. But that history may not be relevant for private institutions, says John Gehman, a leader of the anti-union group at Yale. TA unions at public universities "are really to my mind as much about lobbying the state legislatures as labor unions in the conventional sense."

More important, the students at private universities see themselves as being treated differently from their counterparts at large public universities. Financial deals vary, but many of the students at private institutions get guaranteed support for several years, with limited teaching requirements. That can be quite different at public universities, where assistantships are a 20-hour-a-week commitment semester after semester. Take Mr. Gehman at Yale. A chemistry Ph.D. student who was given five years of guaranteed financial support, he gets a $15,000 stipend, and he is expected to teach one semester in his second year and one in his third. If a union were created at Yale that covered teaching assistants, he would be a member of that bargaining unit for just those two semesters.

Finally, says Mr. Erickson, students know what they are getting themselves into when they come to graduate school, even if the job prospects aren't great. "Universities are not going into coffeehouses and poetry readings in the East Village and clubbing them over the head and dragging them to graduate school," he says.

Drawing the Battle Lines

The question of whether to unionize often is decided by whether you spend a lot of time in a laboratory, whether your field has decent or poor job prospects, maybe even whether you snagged subsidized housing near your Manhattan campus.

Coming from a foreign country often makes students more fearful of joining a labor union, which they see as protecting American workers. At Columbia, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (which claims 15 percent of the voters were Chinese students) urged all of its members to vote against the union.

But most notable is the divide between students in the humanities and the sciences. It's a stereotype, but one based in reality. Several of the anti-union leaders are scientists or engineers. At Brown, many of them are in the geology department. The group at Tufts is led by Brian Comeau, a chemistry student who gets a $20,000 12-month stipend.

This humanities-science divide has been exacerbated by the fact that many research assistants, who are predominantly in the sciences, have been excluded from the proposed bargaining units. Unions say they have just been following the precedent set in the NYU case, which excluded many research assistants. The anti-unionists see it as gerrymandering designed to ensure a union victory. The regional NLRB decision in the Columbia case expanded the bargaining unit to include most research assistants, but they remain excluded from the proposed union at Brown.

At Columbia, Graduate Students Against Unionization cuts across a variety of disciplines, with several of its leaders coming from the history department and others from the social sciences, which are seen as more pro-union than the hard sciences.

But there are plenty of people like Michael Zacuto, a chemistry student. He was so disturbed by the union organizers' repeated attempts to come into his lab that he took snapshots of them. "Basically," he says, "I want to be just left alone, do my research, and get my degree."

Of course, it's hard to have much of an organization based on the idea of not organizing. Often the anti-union groups consist of a Web site, an e-mail address list, and posters. At Yale, GASO calls itself "a nonorganization of graduate students who do not carry cards and do not believe that they know what is necessarily best for anybody."

One of the few conditions for "nonmembership" is "to not let other people tell you what your issues are, especially when these issues are handed out pre-solved with an inadequate and half-baked solution." No surprise that this group rarely gets together. "Every once in a while when [the union] does something, we might meet over beer and bitch about it," says Mr. Gehman. "But then we go back to our labs and work."

While the anti-unionists stay in their labs and the unions keep trying to get new members, the future of TA unions at private institutions still remains in doubt. The upcoming NLRB decisions could firm up the NYU precedent or, as the unions worry, the new appointees by President Bush to the board could return to the NLRB's previous stance, that teaching assistants aren't covered by federal labor law. Either way, an election defeat would require union organizers to rethink their tactics.

Back in Providence, Mr. Erickson is trying to put the union battle behind him, while keeping the whole issue in perspective. His father is a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, where the teaching assistants are represented by the UAW. The sky hasn't fallen there.

"It's not a catastrophe," he admits, "but it's worth fighting against." He knows that unionization won't lead to the salvation or the demise of graduate education. Even if those votes eventually get counted and the union wins, "the Cossacks won't be storming down from Detroit."