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posted by martyb on Thursday August 25 2016, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-just-studying dept.

Common Dreams reports:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said [August 23] that graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private colleges are employees--a ruling with "big implications" for both higher education and organized labor in the United States.

Inside Higher Ed explains:

The NLRB said that a previous ruling by the board--that these workers were not entitled to collective bargaining because they are students--was flawed. The NLRB ruling, 3 to 1, came in a case involving a bid by the United Auto Workers to organize graduate students at Columbia University. The decision reverses a 2004 decision--which has been the governing one until today--about a similar union drive at Brown University.

[...] Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and "the entire Ivy League" had jointly submitted a brief, the Washington Post reports, "arguing that involving students in the bargaining process would disrupt operations, if they want to negotiate the length of a class, amount or grading or what's included in curriculum. Bringing more people to the table, they said, could lead to lengthy and expensive bargaining to the detriment of all students".

But the NLRB, in its ruling (pdf), sided with the students, in a decision that "could potentially deliver tens of thousands of members to the nation's struggling labor movement", according to The Wall Street Journal.


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  • (Score: 1) by DBCubix on Thursday August 25 2016, @12:46PM

    by DBCubix (553) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 25 2016, @12:46PM (#392958)

    Or these private colleges will turn around and rebrand Graduate Assistants as unpaid interns.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:19PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:19PM (#393008) Journal

    This is a slippery slope.

    Next thing you know these Graduate Assistants or now Unpaid Interns will start asking for human rights.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1) by DBCubix on Thursday August 25 2016, @04:29PM

      by DBCubix (553) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 25 2016, @04:29PM (#393087)

      We can't have that! Best to start petitioning for academic prisons now. :)

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 25 2016, @07:16PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 25 2016, @07:16PM (#393150) Journal

        Only if they can be "for profit" prisons.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.