(from a press release issued  Tuesday, April 27, 2010) 

Teaching and research assistants give New York University an ultimatum:

Voluntarily recognize our union or face a new federal election

Workers confident National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will reverse controversial   anti-union decision

NEW YORK – Encouraged by a new progressive majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), teaching assistants, research assistants and graduate assistants at New York University (NYU) are demanding that NYU President John Sexton voluntarily recognize their union for purposes of collective bargaining or face another contentious round in a labor relations battle that has gone on for nearly a decade.

In 2000 the NYU workers won an NLRB union election and became the first private sector teaching and research assistants to unionize. They negotiated a first contract that included a 40 percent wage increase, fully paid health insurance, workload protections, sick leave, bereavement leave and a grievance procedure. Three years later the university took advantage of a controversial ruling by the Bush-appointed NLRB and refused to negotiate a new contract.

The NLRB ruling — popularly called the “Brown Decision” — decreed that teaching and research assistants at private colleges and universities aren’t employees and aren’t entitled under federal law to join unions. The ruling also nullified union authorization elections at Brown, Columbia, Tufts and the University of Pennsylvania.

Yesterday a delegation of NYU student workers, accompanied by NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), visited the office of Sexton to present their demands. Leaders of the Graduate Students Organizing Committee/UAW (GSOC/UAW) said that if the university doesn’t voluntarily recognize their union within a week they will take their case to the NLRB and ask for a new union election.

John Freudenthal, an NYU research assistant in the Chemistry Department and a member of GSOC/UAW, said that “far more” than 50 percent of some 1,800 NYU teaching and research assistants have signed authorization cards asking to be represented by GSOC/UAW Local 2110. He said the highly respected American Arbitration Association verified the signed cards last week.  

“The teaching assistants and research assistants do work that it critical to the success of NYU,” said Bob Madore, director of UAW Region 9A, which includes New York and New England. “All they are asking for is what other workers at NYU have — the right to collective bargaining. We are proud to stand in solidarity with NYU teaching assistants and research assistants.”

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn said, “Over the last 10 years, a majority of NYU graduate employees have consistently chosen GSOC/UAW for union representation. The university has just as consistently fought their right to join a union.  It’s time for NYU to reject its shameful past and join with us in recognizing workers’ rights are human rights.”