NYU Continues to Insist on Withdrawal of NLRB Petition

GSOC March 7, 2013July 31, 2013

Following up on our recent meeting, the NYU administration today rejected our proposal and communicated that, at this time, it will not change its position opposing the right to collective bargaining for nearly 1,000 graduate employees at NYU and NYU-Poly.

To recap, we proposed that NYU re-commence collective bargaining with the grouping of graduate employees originally represented by GSOC/UAW (TAs, GAs, and a small number of RAs) and let the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determine the bargaining rights of the remainder of graduate employees in our pending NLRB petitions – most RAs and all graduate employees at NYU-Poly. Since NYU had expressed discomfort with RA collective bargaining, we thought we made a practical and principled proposal that might help re-establish a constructive relationship with the administration while allowing the NLRB to make a determination on RAs.

The administration, however, refuses to modify its original offer – it will respect the right of some TAs to choose union representation, but only on the condition that we agree to withdraw our pending petitions at the NLRB, which would exclude RAs from collective bargaining at NYU and NYU-Poly and prevent the establishment of legal precedent for tens of thousands of graduate employees at other private universities. NYU’s offer would also require a commitment that we not attempt to represent RAs for at least ten years.

While it is good that we had our first constructive dialogue with NYU in a long time, it is also clear that we are going to have to continue to send a stronger message to the administration that

we are not willing to accept rights for some graduate employees in exchange for denying those rights to other graduate employees. NYU’s position is especially unfortunate since we spent a great deal of time in the meeting explaining how RA collective bargaining under the UAW has worked well at the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts for years.

We will keep you posted with any new developments.

A number of GSOC/UAW supporters are also discussing ways to try to address the cuts NYU made to our health benefits this year. Click here if you are interested in getting more involved in those efforts.

In solidarity,

Your colleagues in GSOC/UAW

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