Letter to the Editor: Improve correspondence with Graduate students

The National Labor Relations Board is currently considering a petitionfrom the Graduate Workers of Columbia University (GWC), a graduate student union, to be officially recognized as a collective bargaining unit, legally entitled to negotiate with Columbia on behalf of graduate students. If the NLRB recognizes the legitimacy of the GWC, it would overturn a 2004 ruling disavowing a graduate student union at Brown University. The Board ruled then that graduate student instructors and research assistants at private universities in the United States are not employees as defined by the National Labor Relations Act.

Overturning the Brown decision would mean, in principle, that graduate students at private universities have the right to unionize if they so wish. (Graduate students at public universities are subject to state laws. Some, notably in California, have robust student unions; Harvard and Yale also have unrecognized graduate student unions organized on their campuses.)

On February 29, Princeton jointly filed an amici curiae brief with the NLRB, alongside Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, UPenn, Stanford, and Yale, arguing that the Board should deny the GWC’s petition. Princeton’s signing of the brief was not heavily publicized; neither the Princeton faculty nor the Princeton graduate student government was notified.

The GSG assembled a committee to investigate the decision-making process behind the filing of the brief, sending inquiries to the graduate student governments, the faculties, and the offices of the presidents of the co-signing institutions. To our knowledge, only Cornell notified its student government of the filing of the brief, and even then Cornell did not solicit input. None of the faculties indicated that they were notified or consulted.

The University’s response to an inquiry from the GSG about the lack of notification was as follows (via Hilary Parker, Assistant Vice President):

“Please note that this is a legal matter, and that decisions on such matters are made by the University’s General Counsel in consultation with appropriate University officials. My understanding is that the recent amicus brief in the Columbia case reflects arguments consistent with the position the University has taken in the past and thus our involvement raised no new substantive issues.”

We are deeply concerned, as representatives of graduate student government and as graduate students ourselves, about the University’s actions. The University’s lack of consideration in not informing its graduate students is dismissive at best and disingenuous at worst.

While it is true that the University has taken a public stance on graduate student unionization in the past, co-filing a brief against union recognition in a 2000 case at NYU , the University did not, as far as GSG is aware, involve itself in the 2004 Brown decision.Furthermore, the amount of time that has passed since the last University involvement in a graduate student unionization case renders the issue new (and clearly substantive) to the graduate student body, if not to Nassau Hall.

Though the GSG has yet to take a position on the status of graduate students, we understand the University administration is entitled to its position on this issue and to advocate as such.It is, however, disappointing that the University neither consulted nor notified its graduate students on its decision to co-sign the brief, particularly given that, unlike peer institutions Harvard, Yale and now Columbia, Princeton does not have a graduate student union organized on its campus.

The impact of unionization on graduate students cannot be overstated.A union would change how graduate student stipends are set and could drastically impact negotiations surrounding housing and rent, health coverage and more.We urge the University to consult, or at the minimum notify, its graduate student community before undertaking similar actions with the potential to so drastically impact graduate student life here.

Signed,