Last Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that students who work as teaching or research assistants at private universities must be considered employees with the right to organize in unions and participate in collective bargaining. The decision reverses a 2004 ruling, in which the Board determined that the student-university relationship was primarily academic, and thus universities were not obligated to follow standard labor laws when determining students’ benefits and compensation.
For the thousands of Ph.D. students who work as teachers and researchers at Duke, this is huge news, although not entirely surprising. The decision is very much in line with recent trends in academic labor rights. Earlier this year, driven by a lack of benefits and job security, Duke adjunct faculty voted 174-29 to be represented by the Service Employees International Union.
The primary argument used by dissenters, as in the 2004 NLRB ruling, is that teaching or undertaking research is itself a central part of the graduate curriculum. In other words, the “work” that is being done by the graduate student is simply a component of the student’s academic and professional development, and the faculty-student relationship is one that is more in line with teacher-mentee, as opposed to boss-subordinate. Dissenters claim that, therefore, graduate students cannot be considered statutory employees and are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. In the 2004 ruling, the Board took this notion a step further, concluding that engaging in collective bargaining would “intrude into the educational process and would be inconsistent with the purposes and policies of the Act.”
On the other hand, the Board found in its 2016 ruling that, whether or not the graduate student’s relationship with the university is considered more academic than economic, the broad definition of the term “employee” within the language of the Act cannot exclude student assistants. So long as they are compensated for teaching or research they do for the university (via financial aid or external grants), students remain under protection of the Act, and consequently can be considered statutory employees with the ability to unionize.
The claim that unionization may interfere with university operations remained present in the recent ruling’s dissenting opinion, which warns of potential strikes, lockouts or even acts of incivility that may occur as a result of the Board’s decision. But when considering the fact that graduate student unionization has existed at public universities in many US states, and has done so for years without such major incidents, it seems highly unlikely that the recent ruling will incite this sort of drastic action.
In the 2004 ruling, the Board determined that the graduate students are primarily students, not workers. Although this distinction is not as critical in the arguments from the recent ruling, there is a case to be made that graduate students are just as much worker as student.
While it is true that teaching and research are vital elements in many Ph.D. programs, the fact remains that these are both services that are crucial for a university to function.
Graduate students who run discussion sections or teach labs as a supplement to faculty-led courses surely learn from their experiences as teachers and become better trained in their respective discipline. But at the same time, they provide a service for the thousands of tuition-paying undergraduate students who expect a quality education from qualified agents. It is simply unrealistic for universities to disburse exorbitant amounts of money by, for example, hiring overqualified adjunct professors to fill these roles; centuries of university operations have found that student assistants are the happy medium for occupying these position. In this regard, it’s just as much a business decision that universities have made in hiring graduate student teaching assistants to run so many of the courses that are offered. The claim that the act of teaching is more for the teaching assistant’s good (i.e., an academic relationship with the university) than it is for the learning undergraduate students and the university as a whole (i.e., an economic relationship) is illogical.
A similar case can be made as well for graduate students who are paid as research assistants. By performing research, it is true that the students will learn, for example, laboratory techniques, data analysis methods or development of communication skills. But as much as doing research benefits the graduate student, there is arguably a larger gain to the faculty and university as a whole. It’s undeniable that graduate students are the stokers of the ship that is academic research, and although it’s the students who do the grunt work, it’s the faculty and the school who receive the credit…and the money. Billions in grants and endowments have been awarded for Duke’s world-renowned research, done mainly by graduate students and postdoctoral associates. These grants provide funding, which, in turn, is used to propel further research and campus investments. As before, the decision to hire graduate research assistants cannot be considered a purely academic one, and consequently, the research assistants’ relationship with the university.
The Board has a checkered history of authorizing student assistant unionization at private universities. The previous 2004 ruling was, in fact, a reversal of a 2000 ruling, which itself was a reversal of a 1972 decision that originally disallowed teaching and research assistants from unionizing. The rulings can be considered a reflection of the political landscape at the time, but there are certain arguments that should not be rehashed in future debates regarding this topic. But for now, the future is bright as Duke Ph.D. students begin organizing to form a student union in light of last week’s decision.
Junu Bae is a graduate student in the chemistry department. His column, “interested in everything,” runs on alternate Fridays.
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