Posts tagged Vanderbilt University
U Rochester Ph.D. Student Workers Strike for an Election Without the NLRB
April 27, 2025 // University of Rochester Ph.D. student workers began striking this week to pressure the institution to agree to what they call a “fair union election.” And for the process to be fair, they say, it can’t be handled by the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board. “We don’t see any kind of path through the NLRB at present,” said George Elkind, a Ph.D. student on the proposed UR Graduate Labor Union’s organizing committee.
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 Since the November election, petitions to form graduate or undergraduate student unions have been withdrawn at Berea College, Clark University, Dartmouth College, Kenyon College, the New School and New York University, said William A. Herbert.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.”
Vanderbilt University does not have to turn over graduate students’ private data to union, court rules
December 4, 2024 // “The National Labor Relations Board…often, as part of unionization elections, requires employers to hand over to union officials employees’ private information,” says NRTW Vice President Patrick Semmens. He adds that the NLRB recently “expanded the information to include personal email and cell phones with no way to assure the information isn’t misused or shared with other third parties.” “This happens even if individual workers object and say they do not want their personal information given to union officials, who in many instances have used such information in nefarious and even illegal ways,” Semmens says.
U.S. Has Certified Unions for 50,000 Student Employees
October 31, 2024 // National Labor Relations Board has approved dozens of bargaining units for housing and dining workers, in addition to teaching assistants. The NLRB released data Monday that underscored one way that could manifest itself. The federal agency said that it has certified 54 bargaining units for more than 50,000 student employees since 2022, in the wake of its 2021 withdrawal of a rule proposed by the Trump administration that would have made it much harder for graduate students on private college campuses to form unions.
Citing Federal Student Privacy Law, Vanderbilt Graduate Students Move to Block UAW Union Organizers from Obtaining Their Personal Info
October 27, 2024 // VGWU union bosses are seeking the students’ personal information as part of the union campaign to place Vanderbilt graduate students under UAW union monopoly bargaining control. NLRB Region 10 in Atlanta has issued a subpoena at the union’s behest seeking to force Vanderbilt University to hand over this information to union officials. However, the graduate students argue that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) forbids the Vanderbilt administration from disclosing this information to any third parties without their permission, including the UAW.
UAW working to help Vanderbilt grad students unionize
April 24, 2024 // “Our graduate students are students first and foremost. We are committed to investing in our graduate students and we provide several enhancements to support them during their academic journey. They receive a comprehensive package of financial aid that includes tuition remission, stipends, funds to support graduate students’ professional development, and other financial support. We do not consider graduate students to be employees and do not believe that they meet the definition of employee under the National Labor Relations Act. As a result, we do not believe unionizing is appropriate for our graduate students."
What the Amazon union do-over in Alabama means for the future of retail
February 16, 2022 // U.S. consumers, especially younger ones, harbor new expectations about the workplace that businesses may not be able to ignore.