House Dems: Grad students at private universities should be allowed to unionize
A stunning suggestion, considering the fact that unions are now bankrupting cities and towns in California and other states. Don’t you feel better knowing that Democrats in the House of Representatives are handling the big problems we face as a nation?
Libby A. Nelson of Inside Higher Ed reports.
WASHINGTON — A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday attempted to deal with a question that will be key for rulings on labor issues in higher education in the coming months: Are graduate students at private universities primarily employees or students? And should they be allowed to unionize?
The discussion divided, perhaps predictably, along party lines, at a joint hearing of two subcommittees on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday morning. Republicans, and college administrators called as witnesses, argued that graduate students should be grateful for their teaching duties as part of their education. Democrats, and the sole labor representative, argued that graduate students should have the right to unionize and collectively bargain.
The National Labor Relations Board this summer received arguments on whether graduate students at New York University should be allowed to form unions, possibly reconsidering a 2004 decision in which the board ruled that graduate students at Brown University, and by extension those at other private universities, could not organize.
Comments
The comments at this article are staggering. Some of them are reasonably-couched arguments. Some of them claim that, because grad students are “working,” they are “workers” or “employees” and ought to be treated as such.
Fine.
You’re low man on the totem pole, then. You get the crap tasks. You get the belittling. If you want to organize, fine. Just don’t expect to get…well, anything for it.
Grad students that are “employed” are already gaining benefits. Tuition forgiveness. Even living stipends.
This sounds like they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
But maybe I’m just bitter because I live in a closed-shop state, and have done my time in a union, with the threat that “you don’t join up, you ‘quit'” stated rather explicitly when they passed around the signature sheets.