Graduate Student Bargaining Rights

Thanks to Dana Nguyen, a graduate student herself, for pointing out this interesting development on the graduate student bargaining rights front (from Marc Bousquet at the Valve):

[Ted] Kennedy has introduced a bill guaranteeing graduate student bargaining] rights, seeking to put them beyond the increasingly dishonest political manipulation of the NLRB:

More than ever in modern education, teaching and research assistants are in classrooms every day, educating students in colleges and universities across the country.  Their numbers are increasing as the number of full time faculty dwindles.  Often, teaching and research assistants are now doing the same job as junior faculty members.

In fact, the classroom is a workplace for these scholars.  It's where they earn the money they need to pay to put food on their tables and a roof over their heads.  They deserve the right to stand together and make their voice heard in their workplace.  Like other employees, they should have the right to join a union and improve their working conditions. Obviously, better wages and working conditions for them also means better education for their students.

In 2004, however, a decision by the National Labor Relations Board changed the law and denied fundamental workplace rights and protections for teaching and research assistants.  This ruling stopped an active organizing movement in its tracks and deprived thousands of teaching and research assistants of their right to organize and bargain over their wages and working conditions.

It's hardly the only bad decision by the National Labor Relations Board under the Bush Administration, which has been the most anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union NLRB in history.  The Board has let workers down at every turn.  It has blocked efforts to gain union representation, undermined workers' attempts to improve their pay and benefits, and exposed them to penalties for seeking to improve their working conditions. 

Because this is an attempt at labor law reform on an issue that probably will not get a lot of non-labor types excited, I am not sanguine about the prospects of a bill such as this from surviving a Republican filibuster. But, of course, we shall see.

PS