Inside the Current Issue

What Does the Fate of NYU's Graduate Student Union Hold for CUNY?

Andrea Morrell

Scenes from the GSOC demonstration: (Top) GC sudents Antonia Levy and Walter Hergt show their solidarity with GSOC; (2nd and 5th) demonstrators carry stencilled signs inside designated 'protest pens' in fornt of Bobst Library; (3rd and 4th) some of the 76 awaiting arrest for civil disobediance.

Graduate student workers across the country are nervous in the wake of New York University's recent decision not to recognize the NYU graduate student union. A more conservative National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Bush Administration has made it more difficult for workers to organize in many industries, including in the academy. This trend encourages a graduate student life that is heavy on ramen noodles and light on medical care. While there is clearly a difference between graduate student workers in the CUNY system and the city's private universities, the NYU decision affects us all.

After a favorable decision by the NLRB in 2000, the NYU union, the Graduate Students Organizing Committee (GSOC)/Local 2110 UAW became the first union of graduate students to be recognized at a private university. Their contract, which expired August 31st of this year and covered teaching, research and graduate assistants, was successful in raising stipends an average of 40% and providing paid health benefits for the first time. Under the contract, TAs and RAs earned a $19,000 annual salary, plus health benefits. The NYU administration has promised that graduate student workers will receive an annual raise of $1,000 and that the university will continue to pay benefits, but has refused to make this promise legally binding with a contract. According to the NLRB's 2004 reversal of the 2000 ruling (known as the Brown decision), private universities are not obligated to recognize graduate unions; GSOC, however, points out that private universities can, and should, recognize their unions.

A noon demonstration protesting the school's decision not to recognize the union was held on Wednesday, August 31st in front of NYU's Bobst Library. Up to a thousand demonstrators rallied during their lunch hour, filling the metal pens that the police set up to contain the demonstration. The crowd was a cross-spectrum of local activists and other supporting unions, such as DC-9 and the CUNY's PSC, as well as contingents of students from schools such as Yale. Also present were State Senators Josþ M. Serrano and Tom Duane, and City Council members Gifford Miller, Christine Quinn, Gale Brewer, Robert Jackson and Bill de Blasio. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney addressed the crowd with a bullhorn. The event ended when 76 people, by prior arrangement with the police, sat down in front of Bobst and were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct. Those arrested included Sweeney, Duane, Elizabeth Bunn (Secretary-Treasurer of the UAW), and NYU and Yale students.

The growing movement of graduate student organizing is a reflection of a larger trend in the academy. Not only graduate students, but also part-time and adjunct faculty, now shoulder a greater burden of teaching at both public and private universities. Simultaneous strikes at Columbia and Yale in April 2005 called for recognition of their respective graduate student unions: Graduate Student Employees Union (GESU)/UAW Local 2110 at Columbia, and Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO)/UNITE-HERE! at Yale. Their demands for union recognition were informed by the grim prospects academic workers face upon graduation - part-time and adjunct jobs are often the only work available.

At the same time, the 2004 Brown decision asks that teaching assistants and research assistants be considered students rather than workers. In fact, the decision states that graduate student work for the university should merely be considered part of their education. In addition, an internal memo from Columbia University President Alan Brinkley to some university faculty and management in February 2005 (www.thenation.com/special/pdf/brinkley_letter.pdf) suggests that university management retaliate against student workers who participate in unionization by delaying their graduation, among other measures. It is clear from the responses of the administrations at Columbia, Yale, and NYU that graduate students' demands for better working conditions constitute an obstacle to the corporatization of education.

CUNY Grad Students and NYC Academic Workers

Student workers at the CUNY Graduate Center are in a unique position. First, students who teach at the colleges as either adjuncts, Graduate Teaching Fellows, Technology Fellows or Writing Fellows are all members of the same union as other part-time and full-time faculty members, as well as members of the professional staff. This allows CUNY's academic workers to negotiate as a single bargaining unit, bringing to the negotiating table a robust picture of how jobs are shifting from full-time to part-time. Second, many Graduate Center students teach in the CUNY system as adjuncts. This provides no job security, as classes are not guaranteed from semester-to-semester, and may be cancelled with little or no notice. The creation of the Graduate Teaching Fellowships (GTFs) was an attempt to formalize part of this process, promising students two classes a semester at the same college for three years, at less than $14,000 a year, and with no health insurance. But limited numbers of students receive these fellowships. As adjuncts outnumber full time teaching staff on many CUNY campuses, including BMCC and Queens College, Graduate Center students are essential to keeping the CUNY system afloat.

When considering the dismal pay for CUNY graduate student fellows and adjuncts, NYU's $19,000 salary may seem like decent compensation. But the labor struggle at NYU can be considered as part of CUNY's struggle for a just contract. An erosion of the conditions of work and study at private institutions will undoubtedly have a negative effect on our already ailing public college and universities. The situation of graduate students at CUNY highlights the intersection of two processes: first, CUNY graduate students, like others in the CUNY system and across the country, are part-timers teaching full course loads and not receiving equal pay, and second, the CUNY system as a whole is severely underfunded, thus limiting the funding for graduate work in general.

The PSC is holding a mass membership meeting September 29th at 6 pm at the Cooper Union Great Hall, 7th Street at 3rd Ave. To get involved in organizing adjuncts and graduate student workers at The Graduate Center, please call the Adjunct Project office at 212-817-7891 or email Andrea Morrell at amorrell@gc.cuny.edu.

Andrea Morrell is a PhD student in the Anthropology department and is the coordinator of the Adjunct Project.