Aug. 31, 2005—Thousands of graduate employees and their supporters rallied at New York University (NYU) to protest the university’s announcement it would no longer bargain with more than 1,000 graduate student employees and teaching assistants and would impose its own pay and work rules on the workers.
Calling the university’s move nothing short of union-busting, student, union and community leaders staged a massive protest Aug. 31, a date that coincides with the expiration of the four-year contract between the graduate employees, members of UAW Local 2110 and NYU.
In March 2001, NYU made good on its history of respect for human rights by becoming the first private university to recognize and bargain with a graduate workers’ union. Like other university graduate employees, the NYU student employees teach classes, grade papers and tests and guide undergraduates.
In 2004, in a partisan 3–2 ruling, Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stated that NYU and other private universities do not have a federally required obligation to bargain with teaching assistants, research assistants and other academic student employees. But nothing in the NLRB decision prevents NYU administrators from honoring the democratic process and respecting the majority of NYU teaching and research assistants who have repeatedly expressed their preference in favor of union representation.
“This isn’t about the Bush administration or the National Labor Relations Board and the war they are waging against working families and our unions—we expect that from them. This is about the Sexton administration and union-busting from a university that has turned its back on the workers who make it work—and we won’t tolerate it,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the cheering crowd.
Sweeney was among 77 protestors arrested by police during the rally on charges of "disorderly conduct."
‘Graduate Student Employees Deserve the Same Rights as Other Workers’
Speaking to the crowd through a bullhorn on the steps of NYU’s Bobst Library, speakers demanded NYU President John Sexton bargain with the graduate workers’ union. UNITE HERE President Bruce Raynor, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn, New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes and New York City Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin also joined the rally.
In public universities, unlike private institutions, graduate employees who teach or conduct research fall under state labor laws and not the National Labor Relations Act, which is overseen by the NLRB. In many states, state labor boards or state supreme courts have ruled graduate employees are workers and have the right to form unions. Thousands of these graduate student employees have bargaining relationships and negotiated contracts, starting at the University of Wisconsin in 1969.
Call NYU President and Others to Support NYU Graduate Employees
Working family activists can support the NYU graduate employees and UAW Local 2110 by calling Sexton at 212-998-2345 and urging him to do the right thing and return to the bargaining table and respect the workers’ choice for a union voice. The same message can be sent to Executive Vice President Jack Lew, 212-998-4090; Vice President of Operations and Administration Cheryl Mills, 212-998-4045; and Provost David McLaughlin, 212-998-2415.
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