Graduate student employee unionization
Graduate student employee unionization, or academic student employee unionization, refers to labor unions that represent students who are employed by their college or university to teach classes, conduct research and perform clerical duties. As of 2014, there were at least 33 US graduate employee unions, 18 unrecognized unions in the United States, and 23 graduate employee unions in Canada. By 2019, it is estimated that there were 83,050 unionized student employees in certified bargaining units in the United States. As of 2023, there were at least 156 US graduate student employee unions and 23 graduate student employee unions in Canada.
Prior to the 2000s, almost all US graduate employee unions were located in public universities, most of which formed during the 1990s. However, that is no longer true today with many private universities now being organized. In 2014, New York University's Graduate Student Organizing Committee, affiliated with the United Automobile Workers, became the first graduate employee union recognized by a private university in the US. In September 2018, Brandeis University became the second private university to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement for graduate student employees, followed by Tufts University in October 2018 and Harvard in July 2020. American University and New School were in the process of negotiating an agreement as of September 2018. Many of these unions refer to their workers as Academic Student Employees to reflect the fact that their membership may also include undergraduate students working in represented job classifications. In 2019, the National Labor Relations Board proposed a new rule that said graduate students are not employees, which could affect unionization efforts at private universities, although the final rule has yet to be published.
Labor laws in the United States and Canada permit collective bargaining for only limited classes of student-employees. In the US, public and private institutions have different authorities governing collective bargaining rights. In public universities, state labor laws determine collective bargaining and employee recognition. In private universities, the National Labor Relations Board has power to determine whether graduate students are considered employees, which would give them collective bargaining rights. The NLRB ruled that graduate students at private universities are employees in a 3–1 decision on August 23, 2016, setting the stage for widespread unionization efforts at universities such as Columbia, Johns Hopkins University, University of Chicago, Duke, Yale, Cornell, and Harvard.
In the U.S., many university administrators and university associations like the Association of American Universities have vigorously opposed the unionization of graduate student employees on their campuses through legal challenges on the grounds that unionization threatens academic freedom of institutions and harms the relationship between faculty and students, although some research suggests that unionization neither negatively affects academic freedom nor harms faculty-student relationships. Many faculty associations like the American Association of University Professors support the right of graduate students to form unions.
In Finland and Sweden, graduate students are often regular employees and are represented by their respective professional unions, such as member unions of Akava in Finland.
United States
The main issue over graduate student employee unionization in the United States is whether academic student employees should be classified as employees or students. The recognition of employee status would give graduate students the right to form a union and to bargain collectively. The position of many universities is that the work graduate student employees do is so intertwined with their professional education that collective bargaining will harm the educational process. Supporters of unionization argue that graduate employees' work is primarily an economic relationship. They point especially to universities' use of Teaching Assistants as part of a wider trend away from full-time, tenured faculty.For tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service considers the compensation of graduate student employees to be wages. When graduate students receive payment for teaching, it is not taxed on a 1042-S form, but on a W-2. The income from teaching is taxed differently from scholarships and treated like employment income.
Public universities
Academic student employees who may be either graduate or undergraduate students at public colleges and universities in the United States are covered by state collective bargaining laws, where these laws exist. Graduate students employees are excluded from Federal bargaining rights under the Taft–Hartley Act's exclusion of state and local government employees.The various state laws differ on which subgroups of academic student employees may bargain collectively, and a few state laws explicitly exclude them from bargaining. Some states have extended collective bargaining rights to graduate employees in response to unionization campaigns. As of 2004, 14 states including California and New York explicitly give collective bargaining rights to academic student employees; 11 states like Connecticut and New Mexico give public university employees the right to collectively bargain, but leaves eligibility for graduate employees unstated; Ohio excludes collective bargaining rights for graduate student employees while still providing the same rights to other university employees; and 23 states deny collective bargaining rights for all university employees.
Private universities
Graduate student employees at private colleges and universities in the United States are covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Initially, the National Labor Relations Board rejected all private university employees including academic employees from being protected by the NLRA. In the Trustees of Columbia decision, the NLRB held that the act did not have jurisdiction in private universities because universities focus primarily on education and are not associated with significant commercial activity. However, two decades later in Cornell v NLRB, the NLRB reversed Columbia, holding that due to changing economic realities and difficulties in distinguishing between commercial and noncommercial activities in private universities, the NLRA covers employees in private education institutions.For the employee status of academic student employees, the NLRB's rulings have shifted in recent decades. In these decisions, the NLRB has grappled with two main conflicting legal arguments. The "primary purpose" approach holds that graduate students are not employees because the primary purpose of graduate students is to fulfill the role of a student rather than that of an employee. In contrast, the "compensated services" approach holds that graduate students are employees because they perform services for others and have distinct manager-worker relations with university administrators.
The "primary purpose" doctrine was first applied to graduate students in Adelphi University and Adelphi University Chapter, American Association of University Professors decision, in which the NLRB rejected graduate teaching and research assistants from collectively bargaining with faculty.
After years of rejecting employee status to graduate students, the NLRB overturned the Adelphi University decision. Under New York University and International Union, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, AFL–CIO , the NLRB applied the "compensated services" legal approach, ruling for the first time that graduate students at private universities were considered employees, and hence protected by the NLRA. However, the NLRB later returned to its "primary purpose" approach in 2004 after a new Republican-appointed majority reversed NYU. In Brown University and International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, UAW AFL–CIO , the NLRB's 3–2 majority ruled that graduate students in private universities are not considered employees.
In recent years, NYU's graduate student union filed a case seeking to overturn Brown University, which in 2012 the NLRB announced that it would reconsider. However, NYU's graduate student union later agreed to withdraw its NLRB petition in return for union recognition by the private university. On December 17, 2014, graduate student unions affiliated with UAW at both Columbia University and The New School have filed petitions at the NLRB to overturn the Brown decision.
Following the NLRB's 2016 Columbia University decision, student unionization in certified bargaining units grew by 14,820 members. Much of this growth was due to ten newly certified student employee unions at private universities, following NLRB elections at Harvard and the New School, as well as voluntary recognitions of graduate employee unions at Georgetown University and Brown University.
History
Beginnings (1960s–1979)
Graduate student unionization began mostly in the late 1960s, influenced heavily by the New Left Movement and the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The two movements sparked discussions on university democracy and students' relationship with the university. Throughout this period, only public university graduate students were able to form recognized unions. Although graduate students in private colleges were active in union organizing campaigns, they were greatly restricted by the Columbia and later Adelphi University decisions, which both barred the NLRA from protecting graduate students in private universities. The board ruled that graduate assistants were not employees since their relationship is primarily for learning purposes.Teaching assistants at Rutgers University and the City University of New York were the first to be included under a collective bargaining agreement. Rutgers and CUNY included graduate assistants with the faculty unionization contract. The University of Wisconsin–Madison's Teaching Assistants Association was the first to be recognized as an independent employee bargaining unit in 1969 and was granted a contract in 1970. At the same time, graduate assistants at the University of Michigan organized a union, which later won a contract in 1975. The next to unionize was the University of Oregon and three Florida universities: University of Florida, Florida A&M, and the University of South Florida. Florida was the first state to unionize where the union membership density in the state was below 15 percent.