The Chronicle of Higher Education
March 11th, 2015
A new tentative labor agreement between New York University and its graduate employees’ union is being hailed by the organizers of such workers at other private universities as both a landmark victory for their labor movement and, in at least one case, a potential template for their own future demands.
Whether graduate students at other private universities can forge similar agreements will depend, first and foremost, on whether either their universities’ administrations or the National Labor Relations Board will allow them to form collective-bargaining units. The NYU graduate employees’ union might remain the only one of its kind at a private institution unless the NLRB reverses a 2004 decision that has so far limited graduate-student unions to only those private colleges that recognize them voluntarily.