BARGAINING LAW FOR GRAD EMPLOYEES
SEN. EDWARD M. KENNEDY (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) have introduced legislation to amend the National Labor Relations Act to grant collective bargaining rights to teaching and research assistants at private universities and colleges. A National Labor Relations Board decision in 2004 took away those rights.

Kennedy and Miller, who are the chairs of their respective education committees in the Senate and House, introduced the Teaching and Research Assistants Collective Bargaining Rights Act on April 17. The bill amends the definition of employee under the NLRA to explicitly include teaching and research assistants at private universities.

The use of teaching assistants is "increasing as the number of full-time faculty dwindles," Kennedy noted in a statement. "Often, teaching and research assistants are now doing the same job as junior faculty members." Kennedy also observed that the NLRB under the Bush administration "has been the most anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union NLRB in history."

PROTECTING ACCESS TO LOANS
AMID CONCERNS that student loans might go the way of the mortgage industry, Washington scrambled in April to ensure that students will be able to get the loans they need to go to college this fall.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008, sponsored by Rep. George Miller, that ensures no interruption in the availability of students loans. The bill increases federal loan limits, improves deferment options on PLUS loans for parents, and clarifies that the U.S. education secretary must advance funds to guarantee agencies functioning as lenders of last resort, should those agencies lack the capital to originate the loans themselves.

At the same time the House passed the bill, the Education Department announced that it wants to more tightly monitor how the lending crisis is affecting students. On April 16, the department put a notice in the Federal Register saying that it is conducting an "emergency survey" of all colleges and universities in the federal guaranteed student loan system. It wants to ensure that colleges are still able to find lenders to provide loans to students despite the withdrawal of 57 (as of late April) lenders from the system.

The lenders have dropped out because Congress reduced the federal subsidy rates on guaranteed loans, which are risk-free to the financial institutions. Additionally, the mortgage default-related national credit crunch is hurting lenders' ability to generate capital.

On the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (which authorizes federal financial aid programs), the AFT holds the position that students need assistance from the federal government in the form of grants, not the opportunity to incur more debt.