Unions for Graduate Students Advance in California, New York, and Washington By SCOTT SMALLWOOD
Graduate-student unions won three separate battles last week, in California, New York, and Washington State, strengthening the movement to organize teaching and research assistants.
In the largest victory, the California state labor board verified that the United Automobile Workers union had collected signatures from a majority of the 6,000 teaching assistants, tutors, and graders in the California State University System. State law requires the university to recognize the union if it shows support from more than 50 percent of the bargaining unit.
Xochitl Lopez, a spokeswoman for the California Alliance of Academic Student Employees, which is affiliated with the UAW, said members would now work to create their bargaining positions. The union plans to seek higher pay and better working conditions.
Colleen Bentley-Adler, a spokeswoman for the university, said administrators are still reviewing the labor board's decision and may find that some people belong in different unions. "But it looks like they've received the number of signatures they need to be recognized," she said.
The new union becomes the second-largest graduate-student union in the nation, behind the UAW-affiliated union for the University of California system.
The UAW had another victory last week in Washington State, where the union had been campaigning for several years to represent teaching and research assistants at the University of Washington. In recent years, the union represented some teaching assistants, but the university would not recognize it as the exclusive bargaining agent for the TA's, contending that state law prohibited it.
Both sides lobbied for a new law, which was adopted in 2002. Last week, results of a mail election were announced by the state's Public Employment Relations Commission. Nearly 59 percent of the graduate assistants favored being represented by the union. About half of the 4,600 eligible voters cast ballots.
In a written statement, Patti Carson, the university's vice president for human resources, said that Washington was committed to a "constructive and respectful relationship" with the union and that the two sides would work cooperatively as they prepared for contract negotiations.
In a third win for such unions, a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board ruled last week that some graduate students who work for the Research Foundation at the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in Syracuse, may unionize. The Research Foundation is a nonprofit organization that handles external grants and research contracts for SUNY.
Regional officials of the labor board have already ruled in favor of research assistants at two other Research Foundation locations, in Albany and Buffalo. Elections have been held in those cases, but the ballots have been impounded because the foundation appealed the regional decisions to the full board, in Washington, D.C.
The foundation has said it plans to appeal the latest decision as well. No date has been set for the election in Syracuse.