Posts tagged Ivy League
Guest column: Union democracy? Not so much
May 21, 2024 // The AFL-CIO Philadelphia Council announced GET-UP may be Philadelphia’s largest private sector union. Nonetheless, GET-UP did not secure — as some overzealous headlines suggest — an “overwhelming majority.” Yes, the 1,807-to-97 vote to unionize was undoubtedly one-sided. However, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported 4,003 eligible voters, meaning only 45 percent of the total workforce supported unionization. Other reports suggest a lower denominator of 3,700 voters. Even then, that’s only 48 percent — clearly less than “the majority of the employees in a unit” seemingly described in the National Labor Relations Act. Yet, due to federal court decisions that strayed from the statutory text long ago, UAW only needed a simple majority
Graduate students file for union election, marking last Ivy to do so
April 17, 2024 // Gaby Nair GS, an organizer with PGSU, told the ‘Prince’ that a “strong majority” of graduate students had signed union cards. The threshold for an NLRB election is 30 percent. PGSU was unable to provide a specific number of signatories to the ‘Prince.’ “We’re really looking forward to getting [an election] date … hopefully that process goes smoothly. We’ve seen it not go smoothly at some of our peer institutions,” Nair said, referencing unionization efforts at the University of Pennsylvania. There, graduate students initially filed for a union election in October, but were delayed by an NLRB ruling that declared roughly 300 students under certain educational fellowships ineligible. The union at Penn was set to vote this Tuesday and Wednesday, but it was rescheduled to May 1 and 2. Princeton has been slower to unionize than some of its peer institutions. Apart from Penn, all other Ivy League universities have formally recognized graduate student unions.
Dartmouth basketball team votes to unionize, rattling college sports
March 7, 2024 // The team’s 13-2 vote to join SEIU Local 560 is a massive achievement for the long-percolating campaign to upend college sports, and one that could motivate others to follow suit. “It is self-evident that we, as students, can also be both campus workers and union members,” teammates Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, who helped lead the organizing effort, said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s time for the age of amateurism to end.”
Dartmouth Basketball Players can now Unionize
February 8, 2024 // The players were ruled to be employees of the school, meaning they can unionize. Not only will the players be able to negotiate their salaries, but also their practice hours and when they will travel to and from games. However, this would go against the NCAA’s amateurism rule, which states that athletes can not be compensated for competing in college athletics unless the money they receive is from scholarships and expenses. The problem is that Ivy League schools do not award scholarships for athletics meaning the Dartmouth men’s basketball team are essentially playing for free. Another problem is that these athletes are being overworked. According to the players, they testified that they were spending over 40 hours a week playing basketball. The NCAA only allows teams to practice 20 hours a week.
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.