This whole thing is a farce. Unions have no place in higher education but as Scott Jaschik points out in this new report, When it comes to unions some assistants are more equal than others.

Shift on Grad Unions

New York University on Friday offered the union seeking to organize graduate students something it has long sought: The university said it would stop legal proceedings seeking to block an election on a union for teaching assistants, and that it would respect the results of the election and negotiate a contract, should graduate students vote for the union.

But there was a key condition attached: NYU would do so only if the United Auto Workers unit seeking to unionize graduate students ends its efforts with regard to research assistants.

On Saturday, a spokesman for the UAW said that the union has no intention of doing so, and characterized NYU’s offer as “a public relations move.”

While the apparent rejection of the NYU offer means that the dispute will remain where it has been — before the National Labor Relations Board — the action represents a shift by the university, which has been insisting that it could not accept a graduate student union of any type. Many other private universities have backed NYU’s prior position, from which it has now deviated, and many graduate students at private universities have looked to the fight before the NLRB as a path for them to unionize as well. Currently, no graduate student unions exist at private universities, although NYU once had one.

The move by NYU also comes at a time when the university’s political position has arguably worsened. As this round of fights over graduate unions moved to the NLRB in President Obama’s first term, the Senate was refusing to confirm the president’s nominees for the board, and lawsuits challenged decisions made by appointees the president had made in recess appointments, which bypass the confirmation process.