CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

Thousands of graduate students fight
for the right to organize

April 2005

WHAT YOU CAN DO
TO HELP

Graduate employees at Columbia, Yale, CUNY, and SUNY are struggling to form unions despite lack of support from the Republican-controlled NLRB. But university leaders still have the legal right—and the moral obligation—-to recognize grad student unions. Click here to urge the presidents of Yale and Columbia and the chancellors at SUNY and CUNY to respect the decision of workers to form a union—without harassment, intimidation or coercion.

And join a rally for workers rights at Columbia, April 20, 4 p.m.

Thousands of underpaid graduate student researchers and teaching assistants are asking for your help. Recently, the Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) denied Brown University graduate student employees any protection for their unionizing efforts under the National Labor Relations Act. That means the only tool grad student workers now have at their disposal is public pressure.

Right now, grad student employees at Columbia and Yale universities are fighting to have their union recognized. More than 4,000 workers at CUNY and SUNY research foundations in New York are also trying to form a union. But everywhere, universities and their subcontractors run anti-worker campaigns to stop them.

The use of fear and intimidation by higher-education employers is hypocritical and unacceptable. It is time institutions of higher education adopt a core set of principles that allow workers to freely decide for themselves whether to form unions.

The NLRB's ruling in Brown in no way bans graduate employees from organizing or universities from recognizing their unions. And their rights are recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Labor Organization's Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1988). So university leaders should do the right thing, and recognize their graduate students' right to unionize.

Back to Solidarity Works page