Yale Agrees to Settlement of Legal Battle Over Graduate Teaching Assistants By COURTNEY LEATHERMAN
Yale University agreed Wednesday to a settlement of its legal battles arising from a 1995 grade strike by graduate teaching assistants. But the deal, like previous developments in the case, falls well short of settling the debate over whether T.A.'s are employees or students.
In fact, the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, which first brought a complaint against Yale in 1996, has refused to sign onto Wednesday's settlement between the university and the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. The union has threatened to continue the fight by appealing to the full labor board in Washington.
Under the new settlement, Yale admitted no wrongdoing and did not concede that T.A.'s are employees. The university also did not relinquish its right to fight that battle at a later date.
The agreement requires university officials to post notices on the campus laying out the National Labor Relations Act's definition of employee rights, such as the right to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively. The notices further state that Yale will not restrain employees from exercising those rights or threaten those who do. In return, the labor board agreed to end its consideration of the union's unfair-labor-practice complaint against the university.
Yale officials said the settlement reaffirms the rights of both professors and students to speak their minds on any matter on the campus -- including T.A. unionization. "We're glad to be able to close a chapter under this matter and move forward," said Dorothy A. Robinson, vice president and general counsel at Yale.
There have been many chapters in this case. In November, the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington ruled that the 1995 grade strike was not protected by the labor-relations act because it was a partial strike. (See a story from The Chronicle, December 10, 1999.) But the board asked for another opinion, from an administrative-law judge, on whether faculty members had made unlawful threats against striking T.A.'s.
The board also directed the judge to determine if the teaching assistants should be considered employees, whether or not he ultimately found that Yale had violated the act by threatening strikers. The judge, Michael O. Miller, had avoided deciding that issue in a 1997 ruling in the case.
Labor-board officials said that the full board's directive did not preclude the parties from settling their dispute.
Essentially, the union's strategy for gaining a ruling on whether T.A.'s qualify as employees under the labor act was to put its case before the board by charging Yale with unfair labor practices. If the union could prove that Yale violated the act, the thinking went, that would prove that the strikers were employees.
By reaching the settlement with the labor board, Yale has, at least for now, stopped the board from reaching that point. Now, the Yale T.A.'s are hoping that question will be answered in a case involving teaching assistants at New York University, which is now before a regional office of the labor board. A decision on that case is expected soon.
Even so, Yale union officials said they saw progress even in the face of what most observers viewed as a defeat.
"This is a huge victory for graduate students organizing everywhere, but especially at Yale," said Rebecca Ruquist, a fourth-year graduate student in French and chair of the union.
Ms. Ruquist said she believed that the required posting at Yale was especially significant. "Now graduate teachers will know their rights and feel confident of their rights to join or assist in any union," she said. "And it's exciting that Yale is pledging that it will protect those rights."