AFT Convention Delegates React With Outrage to NLRB Decision
Overturning Right of Private University TAs to Join Unions

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Says Graduate Employees are not “second class citizens”

Washington, D.C.—The 3,000 delegates to the American Federation of Teachers convention reacted with anger and shouts of “No!” when the union’s executive vice president, Nat LaCour, told delegates that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had, minutes earlier, overturned a November 2000 board decision giving private university teaching and research assistants the right to join a union.

Graduate employees in public universities have organized unions since the end of the 1960s. In private universities, however, their right to organize was unclear until the 2000 NLRB decision involving New York University guaranteed that right.

“Today’s NLRB ruling is outrageous. This must change,” LaCour told the convention.

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Edward J. McElroy said, “Graduate employees are obviously workers who deserve the same rights as their counterparts in public universities. If a member of the NLRB can’t recognize a worker when they see one, they shouldn’t be on a national labor board.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi D-CA, speaking at the AFT convention, said graduate employees “should have the same rights as all workers. They are not second-class citizens. This is a shameful disregard for the rights of these employees.”

The AFT has represented graduate employees in the public sector for more than three decades. The union represents teaching and research assistants at 14 major public universities, including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, the University of Florida and the City University of New York.

In public universities, unlike private institutions, graduate employees who teach or conduct research fall under state labor laws and not the National Labor Relations Act. State labor boards or statesupreme courts in 13 states have ruled previously that graduate employees are workers and have the right to form unions.

In the private sector, the AFT recently organized teaching and research assistants at the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League institution. The university has refused repeatedly to recognize the election held there in 2003 until the NLRB reviewed its earlier decision giving private university graduate employees the same rights as graduate employees in public institutions.

The American Federation of Teachers represents 1.3 million members, including 150,000 college and university faculty, more than any other union. AFT membership also includes 12,000 graduate employees.

The AFT is holding its biennial convention at the Washington Convention Center
in Washington, D.C. through Sat., July 17.

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