Harvard wants to stop grad students from unionizing
‘Graduate students join a university as students, not as employees’
Today, Harvard joined Stanford and Dartmouth in their efforts to the National Labor Relations Board to forbid graduate students from unionizing.
They argue that if they were allowed to unionize, this would classify graduate students as employees due to their work as TFs and researchers.
But the FAS Dean Michael D. Smith adamantly said: “Graduate students join a university as students, not as employees.”
This line is in keeping with the NLRB’s 2004 Brown decision, which stated graduate students are strictly students.
Columbia and the New School, also in New York City, both have similar cases under consideration by the NLRB.
All schools have good reason to oppose such a movement, administrators argue, as it would fundamentally change the relationship between graduate students and professors.
It is currently supposed to be more of a mentorship, with the teaching fellowship as another part of the graduate students’ education, an essential part in order for them to become doctors; if the NLRB rules in favor of the students, it would change to one of labor, fraught with power dynamics.
On 29 February, the seven Ivies, plus MIT and Stanford released an amicus briefing, which essentially gives their opinion on the case.
In it, they show a particular wariness of a union’s right to collective bargaining, which could force the universities to spend more money based on graduate students’ wants.
They also cite the “burdensome and disruptive effect such bargaining has on graduate education.” President Faust has made it explicitly clear that she opposes this movement.
This case gives the NLRB the opportunity to historically redefine the relationship between graduate students and their universities.