More dues payers and more money to give to Democrats.

Scott Jaschik reports at Inside Higher Ed.

NLRB Returns to Grad Student Unions

WASHINGTON — The National Labor Relations Board — voting 3 to 1 — agreed Wednesday to reconsider whether graduate teaching assistants at private nonprofit universities are entitled to collective bargaining.

The board accepted a case involving a bid by the United Auto Workers at the New School to unionize. While the board only agreed to review the issue, the current majority of the board is generally viewed as sympathetic to unions. Having the board reverse its position on unionization at private universities has been a major goal of academic labor during the Obama administration.

But for much of the administration, legal and political disputes blocked President Obama’s ability to appoint NLRB members. And while it looked for a while like a similar case involving New York University would be the one the NLRB would use to reconsider union rights, that case was settled before the NLRB could rule. So while NYU graduate students won their union, they didn’t change the legal landscape.

The issue of whether graduate students have collective bargaining rights at private universities has gone back and forth, as the NLRB’s sympathies have changed under Democratic and Republican administrations. So this could be the last shot for a reversal on the issue during the Obama administration.

Many public universities have long had unionized graduate teaching assistants. But public universities are governed by laws in their states, not by the NLRB.