NAICU Washington Update

NLRB Reconsiders Ruling on Graduate Teaching Assistants

November 02, 2015

The National Labor Relations Board agreed to reconsider its 2004 decision that graduate teaching assistants are primarily students and not employees, and therefore not eligible to form a union. The 2004 decision blocked a unionization effort by graduate students at Brown University. The new case involves efforts by graduate students at the New School to form a union affiliated with the United Auto Workers. The board that issued the 2004 ruling in the Brown case had a majority of members appointed by a Republican president; the current board has a majority of Democratic appointees. Hearings on the New School case have not yet been scheduled.

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