A group of about 2,500 University of Chicago graduate students have been cleared to proceed with a union vote, a victory for organizers after a long hearing in which the university administration argued they are not employees.
The Chicago regional director for the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision late Tuesday that directed a union election for a large group of graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants in a half-dozen divisions and schools. They will vote Oct. 17 and 18 on whether to be represented by Graduate Students United, which is affiliated with Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.
“It’s very exciting,” said Claudio Gonzales, 24, who is pursuing his doctorate in mathematics and is an organizer with Graduate Students United. “We believe that we are workers, and we want the right to bargain collectively.”
The University of Chicago said Wednesday evening it was reviewing the NLRB decision.
“The University of Chicago has a long-held commitment to graduate education, and we take seriously our mission to provide the mentorship and training that allow students to excel academically and become leading scholars,” Jeremy Manier, assistant vice president for communications, said in an email. “We do not believe a union would promote the academic values that are at the core of graduate education at the University of Chicago.”
The decision came more than two months after a 10-day hearing in which the university argued its relationship with its graduate students is exclusively educational and lacked the economic component at issue in last year’s landmark Columbia University ruling.
In the Columbia ruling, the NLRB said graduate students are employees covered by federal labor law, reversing a 12-year precedent and opening the floodgates for unionization campaigns on campuses across the country.
How long that ruling holds remains to be seen. The NLRB’s Democratic majority will soon give way to a Republican majority, and if it takes up an appeal on a graduate student unionization case it could revert to the position that teaching and research assistants are primarily students without collective bargaining rights.
In his decision on the University of Chicago case Tuesday, Chicago Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr said teaching and research assistants are employees because they “perform services for the benefit of the employer, under its direction and control, for which they are compensated.” He also upheld the proposed bargaining unit, rejecting the university’s argument that some types of students shouldn’t be included.
The bargaining unit of about 2,500 is made up of teaching assistants, instructors, lecturers and others in the School of Divinity, School of Social Services Administration, Division of Social Sciences, Division of Humanities, Division of Biological Sciences, and Division of Physical Sciences.
While there has been a rush of campaigns since the Columbia ruling, the number of private universities with unionized graduate students remains small. Graduate students at Loyola University Chicago voted in February to unionize with the Service Employees International Union and American University graduate students voted do so in April. New York University and Columbia University grad students are represented by the United Auto Workers.
Other votes have been inconclusive, including at Harvard and Cornell universities. Organizers at Duke University withdrew their unionizing petition after a vote was inconclusive.
In addition to the University of Chicago effort, the American Federation of Teachers has campaigns to organize graduate student workers at Northwestern, Princeton, Cornell and Brown universities. The union represents 23,000 graduate students at public universities.
The University of Chicago’s Graduate Students United has represented grad students informally since 2007, winning improvements such as child care stipends, but the power and security of an official labor contract would be a game-changer, Gonzales said. Among the issues he hopes a union could negotiate are the cost of health care premiums and deductibles, which have risen markedly in recent years, though a survey of constituents to determine priorities has not yet been conducted, he said.
His teaching work, he said, has saved his instructors a significant amount of time and benefited the university.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said she is “immensely proud of the University of Chicago graduate employees.”
“The board confirmed what we already know — that graduate students are also workers who teach the classes and undertake the research central to the university’s mission,” she said. “The Chicago administration decided to cynically relitigate established precedent to delay democracy, but in the fall, the graduate employees will have their say loud and clear.”
aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @alexiaer
