NYU Won't Renew Graduate Student Contract
Posted on: Saturday, 6 August 2005, 00:00 CDT
NEW YORK - New York University, whose graduate students won the right to unionize in 2000, announced Friday that it will not negotiate another contract with their union.
The National Labor Relations Board had ruled in a case involving NYU in 2000 that graduate teaching and research assistants at private universities had the right to form unions because they were essentially workers.
But last year, the board reversed itself and essentially freed NYU from its legal obligation to negotiate with the union.
In a case involving Brown University, the NLRB ruled 3-2 that graduate students at private schools are not employees and cannot form unions unless the university chooses to voluntarily recognize their union. Three Republican appointees of President Bush voted in the majority.
The contract between NYU and the roughly 1,000-member Graduate Student Organizing Committee expires Aug. 31, and the university said Friday that it would not renew it.
NYU's decision "disregards the wishes of the majority of teaching and research assistants," teaching assistant Jenny Shaw said in a statement released by the union, an affiliate of United Auto Workers Local 2110.
The university said it made its decision after the union rejected an offer to continue negotiating stipend levels and benefits on the condition that the union cease its involvement in grievances and that membership and dues-paying be voluntary.
In its first contract with NYU, in 2002, the union successfully negotiated stipend increases of up to 40 percent, as well as improved health care benefits for graduate students.
Graduate student unions are recognized by several public universities. But other attempts to organize graduate students at private universities, including Yale and Columbia, have not succeeded.
The NLRB, a government agency, deals with private employers and has no jurisdiction over public universities and colleges, which are governed by state laws.
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On the Net:
NLRB: http://www.nlrb.gov
NYU graduate students' union: http://www.2110uaw.org/gsoc/
Source: Associated Press/AP Online
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