Dive Brief:
- Ahead of a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that could lift a barrier to graduate student unions, Cornell and its grad students have come to an agreement about how to proceed, should unionization become possible.
- Inside Higher Ed reports the agreement does not include union recognition, but it does create a path by which graduate students could conduct a unionization drive and a vote, outside of NLRB channels, and it creates a dispute resolution plan as well as a union-management committee.
- While other universities have indicated they will challenge an NLRB decision in favor of graduate student unions and it would still be possible to challenge unions on individual campuses, Cornell has committed to granting immediate recognition to a union if a majority of graduate students vote for it.
Dive Insight:
Adjunct faculty members have successfully formed unions at campuses across the country in recent years, taking advantage of the opportunity for more control over their working conditions. Graduate students — though they perform research and teaching roles in addition to their studies — have been considered students first, not employees, at private institutions since the last NLRB case was decided in 2004. The legal winds have gone back and forth on the topic, and a shift by the NLRB that could soon allow graduate students to unionize would not be surprising. While graduate student unions are more common on public school campuses, the shift in eligibility at private schools could launch serious organizing, especially considering the infrastructure that has been laid by adjunct faculty.