Research foundations can't deny worker rights 

Some institutions will stop at nothing to block workers from exercising their rights in the workplace. Case in point: The City University of New York pulled out all the stops to prevent professional employees working in its Graduate Center Research Foundation (RF) from unionizing. The employees, many of them CUNY graduate students, started organizing four years ago and held an election in 2005. But it was another two years before CUNY had exhausted all its delay-tactic options.

On Oct. 4, the National Labor Relations Board announced the count in the election it had sponsored. The RF employees had voted 73-16 for representation by the Professional Staff Congress/AFT.

CUNY's tactics are illuminating because the same ones are on display at numerous public institutions across the country. These institutions set up foundations as private entities and therefore can operate outside the parameters of public employment laws.

PSC's objections centered on the Research Foundation's claim that graduate students who worked at the RF in a variety of positions, including research and clerical jobs, were students and not "employees" covered by federal labor law. The university supported that claim by citing an earlier NLRB decision that found Brown University graduate employees' status as graduate students disqualified them from having the right to join a union.

The problem with that argument, the union maintained, was that a) the RF is a separate legal entity, not part of CUNY; b) the RF does not offer degrees, so the employees' status as students elsewhere was irrelevant; and c) CUNY is not covered under the NLRB ruling, because it applies only to private institutions.

CUNY's claims were rejected at every level of the NLRB, culminating in a unanimous June 29 ruling by the national board ordering the ballot count to go forward.

The Research Foundation employs workers on 23 CUNY campuses. The PSC represents workers at three RF locations: the central office, where it has a contract; and at New York City College of Technology and LaGuardia Community College, where units at both institutions are in negotiations for a first contract.