The National Labor Relations Board will propose an official rule to prevent undergraduate and graduate students paid by private universities from being able to collectively bargain.
The new rule would state that the students remain classified as students, not employees, even if they are paid, and therefore cannot unionize. The measure would reverse a board decision from two years ago that did allow unionization and in the process hobble graduate student organizing efforts across the country.
“The basis for this proposed rule is the Board’s preliminary position, subject to revision in light of public comment, that the relationship these students have with their school is predominately educational rather than economic,” the NLRB said in a statement. The rule change would prevent universities from even voluntarily recognizing graduate student unions.
Students at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, among others, have organized in recent years. The unions have argued that the students are exploited by the universities, who use them to staff departments without having to pay for additional professors. The universities have generally resisted the efforts, arguing the students are just that and allowing unionization would undermine the graduate student system itself.
The board has taken multiple positions on the issue over the last two decades. It first ruled that students could unionize in 2000. It reversed that ruling in 2004, stating graduate students could not unionize, and then reversed itself a second time in 2016 and allowed unionization.
NLRB Chairman John Ring said the board needed to adopt a consistent rule on the matter. “In the past 19 years, the Board has changed its stance on this issue three times. This rulemaking is intended to obtain maximum input on this issue from the public, and then to bring stability to this important area of federal labor law.”
The board will accept public submissions on the subject, a necessary step before the rewriting the rule.
The NLRB has also rejected efforts in 2015 and 2017 by Northwestern University student athletes seeking to form a union.
