The National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency, is mulling whether it should allow graduate students to unionize.
On Wednesday, the board invited interested parties to submit legal briefs on the question, the first step required by the board before it can rewrite one of its rules.
The board is specifically asking whether it should overturn its own 2004 decision, called Brown University, which said that the students at colleges and universities were not eligible for collective bargaining because they were not really employees. It also is seeking comments on what standards should replace that decision if the board scraps it. It asks, for example, whether graduate students engaged in research funded by outside grants would be eligible to unionize.
A rule change could have a profound effect on higher education, where graduate students are often used as assistant teachers and researchers. Colleges and universities typically waive tuition for the students and provide them with financial support through stipends. The educational insitutions argue that the graduate students are not employees but rather are in mentoring stituations with their professors.
Labor unions have argued otherwise and repeatedly have pushed the labor board on the issue. For a few years, students did have these rights. The board’s 2004 decision overturned one from 2000 that said students could collectively bargain.
The labor board’s announcement Wednesday is related to a case filed last year by Columbia University students working with the United Auto Workers. A spokesman for Columbia University declined to comment. A spokesman for the UAW could not be reached.
The board, whose members are nominated by President Obama, in recent years has been re-examining its various precedents involving higher education. In late 2014 it took up a case by Northwestern University student athletes seeking to form a union. It ruled in August that it did not have jurisdiction over collegiate athletics.
Wednesday’s move is likely to spark another round over questions from the Republican-led Congress, which has grown increasingly critical of the NLRB’s direction under Obama. A spokeswoman for Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman, Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., pointed to his statement regarding the Northwestern case. “I do not believe that Congress, when it wrote the National Labor Relations Act, intended that students — whether they be athletes or graduate assistants — be considered employees of their university.”
