February 27th, 2007

Oppressed recipients of free tuition, stipends and cheap Manhattan housing unite!

By Anthony Marek

The AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers have a filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization claiming that a 2004 administrative law decision, which ruled that Brown University graduate assistants were not employees as far as labor law was concerned, violated students’ freedom of association.

From the press release:

The Brown decision reversed an earlier, unanimous decision by the NLRB in New York University (NYU), which held that teaching and research assistants are employees under the National Labor Relations Act. Employees covered by the Act are entitled to join unions and bargain collectively. The three-person majority in Brown, composed entirely of Bush administration appointees, ruled that teaching assistants and research assistants are not entitled to protection under the National Labor Relations Act because they are also enrolled as students.

The dissent in Brown characterized the majority opinion as “woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality,” in which universities have become increasingly dependent on teaching and research assistants — who earn far less in pay than regular faculty members, and receive almost no benefits — in order to cut costs.

No word on how the other two judges are woefully in touch with academic reality.

More:

At NYU, as a consequence of the Brown decision, the administration has refused to recognize the union or to bargain for a new agreement, but teaching assistants and research assistants continue to wage a campaign for their rights. Teaching and research assistants at a number of private universities are also fighting for their right to engage in collective bargaining despite their current status under U.S. labor law.

Really? I haven’t heard a peep from GSOC since I went home for the summer last year. Guess they must have been drowned out by the bustle from Find the Illegal Immigrant, and maybe Killer Coke too.

The full Brown University decision is here (PDF).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Opinion, That's What He Said. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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