Cornell grad students make unionization push

ITHACA – Graduate students teach courses, administer classrooms, proctor exams, operate laboratories and perform a myriad of other varied work, from the menial to the sophisticated, that helps keep colleges running.

For all the labor performed by grad assistants, however, they do not earn designation as university employees, a reality that keeps students from basic protections afforded to workers under the justification that their primary status at a university is that of a student.

The work status of graduate students has a tangled history as the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency tasked with sussing out employee rights, has shifted in their thinking of how best to classify student workers. A 2000 decision by a Democratic-led board declared New York University graduate assistants as employees, only to be reversed four years later under a Republican-appointed board ruling that Brown University graduate assistants are primarily students with an educational relationship with the university rather than an economic one.

At Cornell University, graduate students have been making a new push toward organizing as employees in line with a recent trend by private university graduate assistants to demand a larger say in work conditions and their status in the academic workplace.

Members of Cornell Graduate Students United made inroads to full union representation last Sunday as dozens of students signed official union cards and paid dues to the fledgling organization aimed at improving conditions for thousands of student workers on the Cornell campus.

Andrew Crook, the group’s communication and outreach committee chairman, said that the move allows students to address their common interests and organize a united voice for their demands.

“We are emphasizing that we are workers,” Crook said, citing issues from wages, lack of certain benefits and conditions faced by graduate students. “People are now viewing this as work — as labor — not just as an adjunct to their degree. They view themselves as student-workers and not just students.”

The NLRB may be ready to reconsider the role of graduate assistants after more than a decade after quashing their status, according to Tamara Lee, an assistant professor at Rutgers School of management and labor relations.

“My sense is that it’s good timing for this to be considered by the Board,” Lee said. She pointed to requests from the NLRB for legal briefs about the 2004 decision barring employee status. “That’s a signal to the public that the Board is ready to reconsider its position and its standard for deciding whether or not graduate students are employees,” she said.

Many union proponents anticipated a challenge at NYU where students organized their own ranks to form a union. In December 2013, NYU voluntarily recognized a union of the graduate assistants, a move that forestalled a direct legal challenge to the employee question.

Lee said many union organizers were shocked and, she said, disappointed that NYU decided to voluntarily recognize the union. While a labor win gaining recognition as a union, it kept the case from proceeding to the NLRB to make a ruling and potentially reverse earlier precedent.

At Cornell, Crook said the nascent union will be considering voluntary recognition as one option as it pushes to get more graduate assistant signatures throughout the semester.

Even if Cornell does not recognize the union, Crook said, “there is the possibility of achieving a lot in the way of reforms to existing policies by sheer fact of existing.”

The group first came together in March of last year over concerns about stipends and the workers compensation policy.

Crook pointed to an incident in August 2013 where a Cornell graduate student working in a laboratory suffered an injury that severely injured his hand. Crook said that since students are not considered employees they are not afforded the same benefits as a permanent worker, and without a union, do not have bargaining clout.

Groups of college workers at schools throughout Ithaca have been pushing for unionization in recent months. In January, adjunct professors at Ithaca College announced their intention to file for union elections this semester. And at Tompkins Cortland Community College, adjunct professors have been in a contentious debate with administrators in their bid to organize under New York State United Teachers representation.

In November, TC3 President Carl Haynes rejected the request by a collection of adjuncts to unionize, citing no evidence that the group had the backing of a majority of adjuncts on campus. The final decision on whether the TC3 group has a majority will be settled by the New York State Public Employees Relations Board.