Colloquy Live: 3/15/2001: T.A. Unions at Private Universities

T.A. Unions at Private Universities: What the Breakthrough at N.Y.U. Means

Thursday, March 15, at 1 p.m. U.S. Eastern time

Will the agreement under which New York University became the first private university to agree to negotiate with a union for teaching assistants pave the way for more collective bargaining by graduate students? How did N.Y.U. and the union reach the agreement?

This is a transcript of the chat from Thursday, March 15.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Scott Smallwood (Moderator):
Good afternoon, and welcome to Colloquy Live. I'm Scott Smallwood, a reporter here at The Chronicle. Today, we have two guests to talk about New York University's recent announcement that it would bargain with the T.A. union.

Earlier this month, NYU and the United Auto Workers struck a deal that removes "academic" issues from the contract negotiations. The agreement makes NYU the first private university to officially recognize such a union.

With us today are Robert Berne, the vice president for academic and health affairs at NYU, and Kimberly Johnson, a Ph.D. student and union organizer. Feel free to direct questions to either or both of them. Also, if you would like to make a comment, go ahead and send it in.

Thanks for joining us, Mr. Berne and Ms. Johnson. Any opening comments?

Robert Berne:
I'm pleased to participate in this chat, and I think that this is clearly an important issue in higher education. NYU has been the test case, so it's very appropriate for Kimberly and myself to be available to share what we're learned up to this point..

Kimberly Johnson:
We are happy that they agreed to bargain with us and we're expecting a productive bargaining session. We hope that they will bargain in good faith and we think that this is a really exciting time in academia and we hope to be the first of many private universities to bargain for contracts for graduate student workers. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this chat.

Question from Joe Berry, three Chicago area colleges:
Now that the administration at NYU has agreed to recognize and bargain with the union of grad assistants, will this same administration also recognize and bargain with a union of the other contingent faculty (adjuncts, non tenure track faculty etc.) if they demonstrate majority support?

Robert Berne:
The position at NYU has always been to examine each bargaining request on its own. Each brings its own set of issues, so I'm not prepared to make any statement at this time.

Question from Lydia Thompson:
I received my Ph.D. in 1998 from NYU-IFA and have taught as a lecturer at UCLA and UCSD. I have learned that T.A.s under my supervision in a big lecture class probably earned more than me. I believe that T.A.s who lead sections earn about $5100/course while lecturers generally earn about $4000/course.

While I applaud T.A. gains, graduate students in unions that have negotiated strong contracts need to realize that upon receiving their Ph.D. they potentially will see their earning power decrease. Are grad. students at N.Y.U. aware of this potential pitfall? Does the T.A. union have any plans to communicate or otherwise cooperate with lecturers in the N.Y.U. system?

Kimberly Johnson:
Yes, graduate students are aware that their earning power will potentially decrease. I think a complementary movement to ours is that adjunct faculty are also organizing. Right now at NYU adjuncts are also organizing with the UAW. Sometimes already adjuncts who we work for earn less than we do and this before we have a contract. We do have plans to work with them. There are at other universities unions with both graduate employees and faculty. We wouldn't have that here because the issues are different for graduate employees and adjunct faculty here, but we do communicate with them and support each other in different ways even though we're not in the same union.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
Based on the experience at N.Y.U., what was the key to making it possible for both sides to come up with the agreement that led to recognition? What would be your advice to administrators and graduate students at places like Yale that are still struggling over this issue?

Robert Berne:
I'm hesitant to generalize from a sample of one to other universities. In our case, after consultation on campus, we concluded that, while many people would urge us to bargain, many of those people, and others, had a grave concern on the effect bargaining would have on academic issues. This led us to a conversation with the union, and embedded in this set of events are a number of NYU-specific circumstances. So it's impossible to tell any other university to follow or not follow the NYU model. I would certainly recommend that people look at the March 1 letter that the union wrote to us because it does contain important information about the academic nature of bargaining. But then people need to translate that and decide on its applicability to their own situation.

Kimberly Johnson:
The key to reaching an agreement here was that we worked very hard to build a strong union here with our members and we were prepared to take a strike authorization vote and to go on strike. Our agreement came hours before we were scheduled to take the strike authorization vote. We also worked to build relationships with the rest of the community in NY and the academic community, the NYU community -- faculty, undergraduate students, and the other staff at the university, especially the union staff -- and the local legislative community, and we had those people also put pressure on the university. But I think ultimately it had to do with the strength of our own union and people's readiness to stand up for themselves. I think our advice to others would be to organize and to stick with it and to keep your union strong. I know Yale has a strong union and we hope they stay with it and don't give up.

Question from Michael McQuarrie, NYU:
In Bob Berne's meeting with the Grad Student Council it was made clear to him that graduate students have no wish to bargain over academic issues. GSOC's campaign literature never discussed academic issues. What is at stake for the university and Bob Berne in insisting they have won some sort of victory on this issue?

Robert Berne:
It's not about victories, it's about putting in writing what the university thought was important. As the questioner is fully aware, there are lots of voices that have been voicing "the union position." There had been union web sites that included information about faculty hiring, but that information has been removed from the web sites. Only last week, one of the union supporters was quoted in a newspaper as saying that academic issues should be on the table. When there are multiple voices speaking for the union, it's natural that we should ask for their position in writing. The union obviously agreed, or they wouldn't have written to us.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
What do you expect to be the toughest economic issues you'll face in your negotiations for a contract?

Kimberly Johnson:
It's hard to say exactly what will be the toughest issue. There are a lot of economic issues that are important to our members. For example, wages and benefits here are woefully inadequate. Everything so far -- I mean getting to where we are -- has been tough, so we don't expect this to be easy. But it shouldn't be tough for the university because they have the money and the resources to meet the needs of their workers.

Robert Berne:
While I appreciate the usefulness of this online chat session, I'm not going to use it in any way to discuss issues that are under negotiation.

Question from Jon Enriquez, Hanover College:
To me the only thing that makes the agreement viable is the separation between academic and bread-and-butter issues, and I think the university and the union are walking a tightrope in keeping them separate. If the union tries to strike because Sally got a TAship and Jimmy didn't, or if the university tries to make TA eligibility a subject of collective bargaining, then the thing will fall apart. Do you anticipate the same kinds of problems in keeping the items separate? Or are there other concerns that loom larger than this?

Robert Berne:
I could not agree more with the thrust of the question, that these are core issues for the future of our relationship. This is precisely why we worked with the union to reach an agreement on the academic issues. We believe that the words in the March 1 letter are a very good first cut at delineating a series of academic issues that will be removed from collective bargaining. Will that need to be further expanded and enriched in the course of collective bargaining? My answer is yes. But our reading of that statement is that there are a large set of issues around academics that will not be part of the bargaining process. I am an optimist and hope that it will be a framework that will be workable. As the question implies, there are no guarantees that the union will abide by this, but we've taken them at their word.

Kimberly Johnson:
One of the issues that the university really tried to rally people around is this impossibility of separating academic issues and employment issues. The fact is that graduate employee unions have existed at public universities for several decades and they've been able to walk that tightrope and to separate those issues. We expect that we will be able to do the same thing. In fact, we're sure we'll be able to do the same thing. There are more pressing issues for people. Economic issues, for example, are more pressing. Things like wages and benefits.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
A number of universities have recently announcement improvements in stipends or benefits for graduate students. Is there a sense that universities are now more likely -- facing the threat of unionization -- to take graduate students' needs seriously? What do you make of the new competition?

Robert Berne:
I think the competition for top grad students pre-dated our involvement in a discussion over unionization. I think if one looked over time, one would see continuing competition over the parameters of financial aid for grad students. I don't feel that I'm in a position to conclude whether unionization plays into the recent round of changes, except that the competition for top grad students has been with us for at least a decade.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
Things got tense at times during the struggle over whether the union would be recognized. And relations between graduate students and administrations seem even worse at Yale and some other institutions. Have you done anything to build trust now, as you are starting negotiations?

Robert Berne:
Let me answer by talking about the NYU situation. I actually believe that while there were and continue to be significant differences about the value of graduate assistant unionization for both grad students and the university, both handled those differences in an appropriate and productive manner. Many things that have been said in other non-academic union disputes by both union and management were not said in this setting. The discourse focused on the issues, admitting that there were differences of opinion. No statements were issued by us that I have problems with today. A principle that guided us throughout the last 2 years is that graduate students are an important part of a university and regardless of how this had turned out, we're going to have to work together in the future. Yes, there were real differences, we voiced them, that's behind us now, and we're going to work together in this new environment.

Kimberly Johnson:
A lot of the people who I've talked to through organizing are wary of the university. The tensions have come from their threatening to break the law. But I think they have an opportunity with bargaining to rebuild that trust.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
Under President Bush, it's possible that the make-up of the N.L.R.B., which provided key support to the union drive, could change. Do you see any chance that N.Y.U., or other private universities, would try another round with the N.L.R.B. Or is there agreement now that T.A.'s can unionize?

Robert Berne:
From my reading, the NLRB has a history of decision-making that reflects the political ideology of the administration. The administration essentially gets to choose the majority of the 5 members on the board. From that I conclude that there is a strong political dimension to NLRB decisions, as evidenced in our case as the NLRB overturned a 25 year history of graduate students not being able to bargain. Given the political dimensions of the NLRB, and given the presidential change in our case, with a change in administration, there is a possibility that the graduate assistant union issues will get revisited by the Bush board.

Question from Kim Williams-Guillen, Anthropology, NYU:
Much has been made of the NLRB's (not GSOC-UAW's) decision to exclude TA's in some science departments from the bargaining unit. My understanding is that this decision was based on the nature of these positions and their status as being largely funded by outside grants (e.g., NIH, NSF). Why is the administration seeking to exclude students from the bargaining unit (e.g., those from Stern, RA's in departments such as Psychology) when it has so vigorously decried the exclusion of these employees in the past?

Robert Berne:
The university's position all along has been that the graduate assistants should not be viewed as employees. But once the decision had been made by the NLRB to view graduate assistants as employees, one would hope that the NLRB would use consistent definitions of who is in and out of the unit. Right now, some externally funded science students are in the unit, and some are out of the unit. We believe that if some are out, as decided by the NLRB, then all should be out. The decision around the business school students centered on the fact that they were receiving financial aid but no stipends.

Question from Chris Geyer:
Why do TAs need bargaining rights at all? Other graduate students need to balance their academic lives with the need to support themselves in the open labor market. Why should TAs be unionized when they already have higher privileges just by working in the very world they learn in?

Kimberly Johnson:
Regardless of how privileged or not privileged people are, we are workers at this university, and like any other workers in any other workplace we have a right to form a union and to enter into collective bargaining. I've talked to hundreds of people who are forced every day to make very difficult choices because they're not earning enough money to support themselves and their families and I've talked to people who have no recourse when they're treated unfairly or inappropriately by their supervisors. Those are some of the reasons why graduate employees need bargaining rights, but in the end we supply a valuable resource through our teaching and other work to the university. We deserve to have that recognized as work and to be able to exercise our rights as workers.

Question from G. Derek Musgrove, TA, History Department, NYU:
Mr. Berne, why did the Administration refuse to bargain until the day of a strike vote by GSOC-UAW?

Robert Berne:
The university had been reaching out to the union since January to try to resolve the issues. It was only late in February when the union came to use and said they'd like to work out the details. Moreover, once progress was underway, it was the union that urged us to reach the agreement prior to the strike vote. So Mr. Musgrove should ask the union why they urged us to reach an agreement before the strike vote, not us.

Question from Kim Williams-Guillen, NYU:
A follow up question related to NLRB. After unanimous support from the NLRB board members who voted, does he foresee NYU trying to overturn the NLRB decision? Or will the administration stick to its announced decision to bargain in good faith with the TA union?

Robert Berne:
We will bargain in good faith with the TA union, but what the NLRB does is not something that I can predict.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
The job market for new Ph.D.'s in the humanities is quite difficult right now and has been for some time now. How much do you think that has influenced the growing union movement? Do you think that, if graduate students were confident of landing good jobs later, they would be less likely to be focused on their treatment now?

Robert Berne:
It certainly is a factor. People are aware that their futures in the academy are uncertain. It's brought the issue home for a lot of people. If their futures are uncertain then they should do what they can to make their present work viable. Also I'd say if the job market in the humanities has changed, universities' reliance on graduate students' work has also changed. Universities depend much more heavily on graduate students as cheap labor. I think that if graduate students were more confident of landing good jobs, some might be less likely to focus on their treatment now. Overwhelmingly, though, people are concerned about their lives now. They're concerned about how they're going to pay their rent this year, not whether or not they get a faculty job.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
As you look at the relationship between graduate students and universities at public universities that have had t.a. unions for some time, do you see models that would work well at NYU and other private institutions?

Robert Berne:
Our approach to the union to remove academic issues from collective bargaining was strongly influenced by state statutes governing public universities that do in fact exclude academic issues from collective bargaining. It's fair to say that the experience at public universities has already had an effect on how we've approached the issues up to this point. There are significant differences in a range of issues, like strike provisions, that differ at public universities from the framework that we will operate in under the National Labor Relations Act.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
A question for Mr. Berne: N.Y.U. isn't as wealthy as Yale or Columbia or some of the other private institutions where T.A.'s are pushing to unionize. Can N.Y.U. afford to do the things the graduate students want?

A related question for Ms. Johnson: How much should a university's wealth factor into what graduate students demand?

Robert Berne:
What we'll end up deciding has to be negotiated and everything a university like NYU does has to be consistent with our financial resources.

Kimberly Johnson:
NYU is one of the wealthiest universities in the country and it's one of the biggest landholders in NY. It's made a push to be a major academic institution; and one of the requirements or expectations of a major academic institution is that it MUST treat its employees fairly. Treating the people who teach the classes here fairly is a good investment for the university. NYU is a wealthy institution and so that will factor into what our demands are. It would be impossible for it not to.

Question from Scott Smallwood:
How do you think undergraduates have reacted to the debate over unionization at N.Y.U.?

Robert Berne:
About a year ago, many student leaders voiced concerns about the prospects of graduate student unionization. More recently, in the face of threatened disruption by the graduate assistants, some student opinion appears to have shifted to the position that the university should bargain with the graduate assistants. I think it's fair to say, like with almost every constituency on campus, there's a division of opinion.

Kimberly Johnson:
Well, there has been a huge reaction by undergrads. They've been incredibly supportive of our drive here. Just days before we were to take a strike authorization vote and before the university agreed to bargain with us, the undergrads presented a petition to the administration with close to 3,000 signatures demanding that they bargain with us. They've also worked very closely with us, participating in actions and leafleting and helping to push pro-union resolutions through student-government groups. Almost daily the student newspaper has printed editorials questioning the university's refusal to bargain and demanding that they do bargain. They've also been addressing their classes, educating each other about the unions and what it means to them. They've included us in their own actions. In fact, every year there's a National Student Labor Day of Action and this year on April 4 the undergraduates here will sponsor a contract kickoff rally in support of our union.

Scott Smallwood (Moderator):
That's all the time we have for today. Thanks for the questions and my thanks to Mr. Berne and Ms. Johnson for participating in the discussion.

Kimberly Johnson:
First, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this chat. We are excited about bargaining but also a little wary, and we see bargaining as an opportunity for the university to really rebuild people's trust and to repair its relationship with students and student workers. We have a lot to accomplish with bargaining that we think will benefit our members and the university as a whole. We've got a really strong union, we'll remain strong throughout bargaining, and we hope to get a fair and equitable contract where everyone benefits.

Robert Berne:
I appreciate the questions and maybe Ms. Johnson and I should agree to come back at some time in the future and let you know what transpired at the bargaining table.