Bill Would Grant TA's at Private Colleges the Right to Form Unions
April 17, 2008
Washington — A bill introduced in Congress by the Democratic
chairmen of the Senate and House of Representatives education
committees would take the political mystery out of whether graduate
assistants at private colleges and universities have the right to form
labor unions.
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled both ways on the issue. In a landmark 2000 ruling,
it asserted that graduate students at New York University could
unionize, and a wave of union-organization efforts followed. But that
movement faltered four years later, when a reconstituted board decided
that teaching assistants at Brown University were primarily students
rather than employees, and therefore were not covered by federal labor
law.
The measure introduced today by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California would amend the National Labor Relations Act so that the definition of an employee would specifically include teaching and research assistants at private universities and colleges, according to a statement on the senator’s Web site. —Charles Huckabee
