Nation

Many grad teaching aides lose union rights

WASHINGTON - Graduate teaching assistants at private universities do not have the right to form unions, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled, reversing its 2000 landmark decision that resulted in thousands of new union members. The board, led by three Republicans appointed by President Bush, ruled that about 450 graduate teaching and research assistants at Brown University in Providence, R.I., could not be represented by the United Auto Workers because they were students, not employees. The two Democrats on the five-member panel opposed the decision, which does not affect public universities and colleges. The ruling was issued Tuesday and made public Thursday. "Because they are first and foremost students, and their status as a graduate student assistant is contingent on their continued enrollment as students, we find that they are primarily students," the decision said. It is one of several recent blows the GOP-dominated board has delivered to organized labor. Last month, the panel overturned another Clinton-era case that had extended to nonunion workers the right to have a co-worker present at a meeting with supervisors that might result in discipline. Also last month, the board voted to consider two cases that could force unions to abandon recruiting strategies that let them bypass elections in the workplace. Brown's provost, Robert Zimmer, said the new ruling "correctly recognizes that a graduate student's experience is a mentoring relationship between faculty and students, and that it's not appropriate for collective bargaining." Alan Reuther, the UAW's legislative director in Washington, said, "We strongly disagree with it and we think it reflects this administration's anti-labor orientation." The decision overturns the board's unanimous ruling in 2000 that let 1,500 graduate teaching assistants join a union at New York University, the first private school where that happened. The Clinton-era ruling by two Democrats and a Republican - there were two board vacancies - said graduate students who work and receive compensation as researchers and teaching assistants at private universities have the same rights as other workers to form unions and negotiate working conditions. But the current board now says that decision was wrong because it reversed more than 25 years of precedent. "In our decision today, we return to the board's pre-NYU precedent that graduate student assistants are not statutory employees," the ruling said. This "long-standing approach changed abruptly" in 2000. NYU, in a statement Thursday, said it was gratified by the decision and noted that the contract it negotiated with graduate teaching assistants is up for renewal in a year.