Posts tagged Columbia University
Ph.D. Workers and Their University Both Backed a Union Election. Then Trump Won.
March 6, 2025 // Student workers at other private universities across the nation may also be wary of going before the Trump-era NLRB. Since the November election, petitions to form graduate or undergraduate student unions have been withdrawn at Berea College, Clark University, Dartmouth College, Kenyon College, the New School and New York University, said William A. Herbert. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, said reports of what’s happened at Rochester suggest the university “has decided to shift to a pre-litigation mode that might include an effort at overturning current NLRB precedent.”
NLRB Reaffirms that Graduate Students Are Statutory Employees under NLRA
September 18, 2024 //
Student Activists Are Turning Their Attention to the Labor Movement
June 22, 2023 // Last year, the Young Democratic Socialists of America’s Red Hot Summer program trained hundreds of young people to organize their workplaces and helped launch union drives representing thousands. This year’s program hopes to be even bigger, writes YDSA’s cochair. Student workers across the country are engaged in an unprecedented wave of labor organization. Spurred on by the support of organizations like the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), of which I am cochair, undergraduate student workers have launched union drives on nearly thirty public and private campuses in the United States. These workers are fighting for increased pay, improvements to scheduling and hours, sick pay, and better health care. They are also fighting for issues that go beyond bread and butter, like removing Israeli products from dining halls.
Push to unionize at college dorms is growing
March 31, 2023 // Colleges have been a breeding ground for illness and social havoc since the pandemic began, and much of the onus has been placed on RAs, who are appointed to shepherd the well-being of an entire floor of younger students. In the past, that has typically meant hosting events, mediating roommate disputes, and perhaps guiding an overserved first-year safely to bed. For this, RAs are compensated with free or discounted housing and meal plans. But in recent semesters, and especially since schools reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, those responsibilities have ballooned. RAs who spoke with the Globe describe being deputized as “COVID police” to enforce masking and social distance, and wrangling students whose university — or even high school — experience was stunted by lockdowns and remote learning. Several schools later assigned RAs to longer overnight “on call” shifts and additional check-ins with residents.
Duke to Challenge Ph.D. Students’ Right to Unionize
March 14, 2023 // “Duke provides significant financial and programmatic support for Ph.D. students to help them reach their academic goals. That support is very different from an employment relationship. Duke will seek to present evidence demonstrating that its graduate students in their academic programs are not employees, and that the NLRB’s 2016 reasoning was incorrect.”
Yale grad students vote to unionize after decadeslong push
January 11, 2023 // Graduate students across the U.S., both at public and private institutions, have pushed in recent years to organize and bargain collectively. Columbia University, another Ivy League school, in 2018 agreed to begin contract negotiations with a union representing its graduate student teaching and research assistants, ending a long battle in which the university denied them the right to unionize.
Yale Union Election Is Latest Move in Campus Labor Renaissance
December 5, 2022 // Unite Here Local 33 previously won a set of elections to represent several Yale academic departments as separate bargaining units before pulling the petitions to avoid the Trump board ruling on the university’s appeal. The union was able to move quickly to an election following the flip of partisan control at the NLRB. The in-person voting will take place a little over a month after the union filed its Oct. 24 representation petition.
Spurred on by SWC-UAW contract, student workers nationwide pursue greater workplace protections
February 26, 2022 // The union's victories have spurred student-worker unions across the nation to fight for similar goals
Workers across the US are rising up. Can they turn their anger into a movement?
January 3, 2022 // So far, increasingly militant workers are lacking something vital: a leader who can unite them all. Will that change?
Columbia U. student workers launch second largest strike in the country
November 7, 2021 // Union of 3,000 strikes for the 2nd time this year.