Published Spring 2006
 
"Whose University? Our University!":
The Case for GA Unions
The idealized version of the university – as a community of scholars
enjoying a free space for intellectual discourse, insulated from
the pressures of the outside world – if it ever existed, exists
no more. Higher education in this country is a colossal industry,
increasingly ruled by the imperatives of the marketplace. Academic
freedom is threatened, not by graduate student assistants (GAs)
demanding input into decisions that affect their working lives,
but by administrators seeking unilateral control of decision-making.
The continued corporatization of higher education has led to a
greater centralization of control in the hands of university administrators
and boards of directors whose members are generally drawn from the
top ranks of corporate executives. With this centralization has
come a corresponding decrease in faculty governance and academic
freedom. This has been facilitated by a growing reliance on contingent
academic labor, including GAs, adjuncts, lecturers and other non-tenure
track faculty. The decrease in tenured positions has not only allowed
universities to generate revenues with smaller outlays for salaries
and benefits; it has eliminated a key prerequisite for genuine academic
freedom - job security. Without the job security provided by tenure,
faculty members who dare to question the views of academic administrators
put their jobs at risk.
To understand what is in stake in the bitter labor dispute at
New York University (NYU), it is necessary to understand the changing
economic context within the academy. The present strike by GAs at
NYU is not so much about the need of GAs to receive a living wage
for the critical services they provide to the university, though this is
certainly a central reason why the majority of NYU GAs voted for
union representation. It is about the GAs' demand that they be treated
as valued members of the university community whose views, as articulated
by their chosen representatives, are taken into account in setting
the university's priorities. In an academy increasingly characterized
by the dehumanization of the marketplace, the GAs are demanding
collegiality and respect.
Historically, GAs have labored for the universities which they
attend as students under conditions approaching peonage. In return
for the extensive services they provide, services which are critical
to the day-to-day functioning of their universities, they have been
given meager cash stipends, inadequate to support themselves or
their families. Despite the central role GAs play in the functioning
of the academy, they often must rely on loans or other sources of
outside funding in order to survive while they complete their graduate
education. This servitude to their schools has been justified as
an apprenticeship that prepares them for their eventual entry into
the academy as the next generation of the professorial elite. While
they have always been exploited by their universities, generating
more money in tuition (or research) revenue than they were paid
in salary, there was a time when most GAs could expect, upon graduation,
to find tenure track positions. This is no longer the case. Faced
with the fact that most of them will never attain such positions,
GAs have come to understand that they cannot afford to wait for
adequate wages, respect, and some degree of control over their working
lives. The resulting surge in GA-organizing, coming at a time when
labor is under heightened attack, has been met with aggressive resistance
by the universities at which they work.
Since President Bush assumed office in 2001, private employers,
supported by the federal government, have launched an all-out assault
on attempts by their employees to organize. Even before Bush was
elected, labor law in this country provided only minimal protections
to workers and unions, and employers routinely chose to violate
the minimal protections which did exist. For example, it has been
common practice for managers to make illegal threats and to fire
union supporters, knowing that by doing so they could defeat union-organizing
drives and, even if ultimately found guilty years later, pay relatively
small fines. These fines, seen as a cost of doing business, have
been viewed as less costly than paying union wages.
But under the current regime in Washington, things have gone from
bad to worse. The government is now actively aiding and abetting
corporate managers in their campaigns to defeat the organizing efforts
of their employees. One of the main tools that has been used in
this campaign to eviscerate the union movement is the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB, effectively the nation's most
powerful arbiter of labor matters, is now dominated by Bush appointees
who don't disguise their antipathy for the labor movement. Originally
conceived as a body of experts with special knowledge in the field
of labor relations, the NLRB has the job of interpreting and applying
the Labor-Management Relations Act, the federal statute that governs
relations between unions and most private sector employers. It supervises
union elections, adjudicates disputes involving these elections,
and deals with other representation issues, unfair labor practice
charges, and related matters. While most of the NLRB's decisions
can be appealed in federal court, the courts (themselves increasingly
domainted by conservative appointees) are supposed to – and do –
show considerable deference to the "expert" decisions of the NLRB.
In the last five years the NLRB has stripped millions of workers,
including GAs, of the right to organize under the protection of
federal law. (In addition to GAs, the NLRB has effectively denied
union rights to large numbers of disabled workers, nurses, workers
employed through temporary agencies, and others.) Further, the NLRB
has seized on virtually every opportunity to interpret existing
laws in ways that weaken protections for workers. The NLRB is supposed to be a place where working people can go to vindicate their rights
when they are violated. But things have gotten so bad that unions
are now often reluctant to bring legitimate claims of labor-law
violations, for fear that the NLRB will view these cases as opportunities
to gut the few remaining protections.
It is not surprising that NYU, like other corporations, is taking
advantage of the current political climate to try to destroy the
union that represents its graduate workforce. Like most other corporations,
NYU has shown that it will use any means at its disposal to prevent
a union victory. Thus, when the GAs filed a petition for a union
election in 1999, NYU spent millions of dollars to hire high-priced
lawyers and consultants to advise them on how to defeat the union.
In an effort to delay the unionization vote, NYU launched legal
challenges, claiming that its GAs were not employees, despite the
fact that they teach half of all undergraduate classes. Then, when
the union was victorious, NYU challenged the validity of that election
in order to delay certification and its legal obligation to bargain.
Like other corporations, NYU has also used scare tactics, such as
telling GAs that unionization would undermine their relationships
with their professors and decrease the value of their NYU education.
These challenges were designed to demoralize the GAs, deplete the
union's coffers, and avoid negotiating with the union for as long
as possible.
Perhaps most audaciously, NYU claimed that the union posed a threat
to academic freedom - a claim that it now asserts again to justify
its withdrawal of recognition from the union. In fact, the unionization
of academic workers, including GAs, helps to protect what is left
of academic freedom from the unilateralism of university administrators.
What makes NYU's claim so outrageous, however, is the fact that
the university itself has had no qualms about violating academic
freedom in pursuit of its goal of defeating the union. The case
of Joel Westheimer provides one striking example of the depths to
which NYU's administration is willing to descend in its continuing
efforts to defeat the union.
In 1999, after NYU challenged the right of GAs to vote on whether
to unionize, the NLRB held 55 days of hearings, involving scores
of witnesses for each side. Professor Westheimer was the only non-tenured
faculty member brave enough to testify on behalf of the union. One
of the most prominent professors of education in the nation, winner
of a prestigious university-wide award for excellence in scholarship,
and author of the then-recently published and highly acclaimed book,
Among School Teachers: Community, Autonomy, and Ideology in Teachers'
Work, Professor Westheimer believed that his prominence would probably
protect him from retaliation. But shortly after his testimony for
the union, the axe fell. Despite the unanimous recommendations of
his tenure committee and his department, he was denied tenure. After
investigating, the local office of the NLRB eventually filed a complaint
against NYU alleging that Westheimer was denied tenure in retaliation
for his testimony. Westheimer, no longer interested in returning
to NYU, negotiated a settlement with the university. But the message
was clear: Support the union, and face reprisal.
In its attempts to break the current GA strike, NYU has again
shown no hesitation about disregarding academic freedom. Not only
has NYU denied financial support to GAs during the period when they
are on strike; it has threatened to blacklist the strikers, to prevent
them from working in future semesters, whether or not they are the
most qualified individuals for open positions.
Yet, astonishingly, the NYU administration now claims that it
is the GA union that threatens academic freedom. In support of this
claim, it cites grievances filed by the union over matters such
as who would be assigned to teach particular classes. NYU's assertion
that the union jeopardized academic freedom is just as groundless
as its claim that NYU is defending it. The union never challenged
NYU's right to make class assignments per se, but, rather, objected
to NYU reclassifying work traditionally done by GAs as "adjunct"
work, in order to slash salaries and erode the union's bargaining
unit. In some cases, NYU hired the same graduate students to perform
the same work that they had previously performed, but reclassified
them as "adjuncts" so that they would not receive union wages and
benefits.
NYU has used its preposterous claim of academic interference by
the union to justify its posturing demand that the GA union forfeit
a meaningful grievance procedure. Such procedures, which include
recourse to a neutral decision-maker, are included in virtually
every other collective bargaining agreement in the country. NYU
knew that the union couldn't accede to this demand, since without
recourse to a neutral arbitrator it would be unable to enforce its
agreement with the university.
It is not surprising that NYU's administration wants to make decisions
without having to bargain with a union. But no one should be fooled
by the administration's specious claims that its opposition is motivated
by a desire to protect the university's academic freedom from the
threat posed by the union. Rather, NYU's effort to break the GA
union, like its efforts to erode tenure rights and faculty governance
generally, are part of a national effort by academic administrators
to concentrate decision-making authority in their own hands.
The GAs at NYU, without whom the university could not function,
are fighting for a living wage and for a voice on issues concerning
their working lives. But more than wages and a meaningful grievance
procedure are at stake in the GA strike. If there is to be a space
for open intellectual discourse at American universities, it will
be because academic workers at all levels, and the students they
teach, unite to demand, create, and protect such space.
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