Harvard Grad Students Organize Quietly

Against the background of vocal graduate student unionization efforts at private Eastern universities, some of Harvard’s teaching fellows are quietly organizing in an attempt of their own.

Since New York University (NYU) became the only private university in the nation to have negotiated a contract with a teaching or research assistant union earlier this year, university administrators at schools like Tufts and Columbia have fought teaching fellow unionization by their own students.

At Columbia, hundreds of teaching assistants walked out of classes April 29 after the university appealed a decision favoring graduate student unionization by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

At Harvard, where unionization discussions are still in the beginning stages, University officials have declined to comment on whether they would join many of their Ivy League counterparts in protesting such efforts.

“I don’t want to-—as a rule—comment on future possibilities that might emerge,” says University President Lawrence H. Summers in an April interview. But he added, “graduate student teaching fellows are very much a part of the professional teaching faculty of the University rather than a separate group of employees.”

A Need for Unions?

A committee of graduate students that formed last year has begun asking students to sign cards indicating their wish to receive union representation, the first step required by the NLRB for unionization.

But the process can take years.

Unionization efforts at NYU, which began in 1998, only culminated in January in the signed contract with teaching and research assistants, which raises yearly salaries from $11,000 to $15,000 and commits the university to providing affordable health care.

Harvard pays it teaching fellows roughly $13,000 to $16,000 annually and offers a health care plan.

And over the last few years, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) has worked with the Graduate Student Council to increase stipends, health benefits and financial aid availability, wrote GSAS Dean Peter T. Ellison in an e-mail. Next year, GSAS will increase financial support opportunities to free first-year students from teaching, and will continue its push for the creation of more housing.

“I see every reason to be optimistic about our progress in these areas,” Ellison wrote.

But while graduate student council President Shaun L. Rein says Harvard’s salaries for teaching and research assistants are generous, some graduate students say high housing costs in Cambridge combined with a lack of Harvard dorm space make maintaining an adequate standard of living difficult.

“We’re paid really well, but at the same time I can’t really pay rent,” says Nadine Knight, a third-year graduate student in the English department.

And Kimberly Johnson, an organizer with the United Auto Workers (UAW) who has been coordinating graduate students’ efforts at Harvard, says financial concerns are just one of many reasons why graduate students might choose to unionize.

“For some people they want to address things like salary, but also a union is about having a say in working conditions, things like workload or having a fair grievance procedure,” she says.

Knight, who has been approached by union organizers, says she was unsure if she would support a unionization effort. “I wouldn’t sign a card because the people wouldn’t give me the info I wanted,” she says. “There’s a lot I want changed, but I’m not sure if a union would get it changed.”

Rein says the GSAS deans have been willing to respond to students concerns on most issues, making a union unnecessary.

“There’s nothing here at Harvard that’s going to galvanize students,” he says. “Life is pretty darn good here for grad students. There isn’t a specific issue that everyone is upset about.”

Slowly Organizing

Although he has not been approached to sign a card, first-year graduate student Shawn K. Mullet says that graduate students in the History of Science department discussed the issue of unionization in an e-mail exchange last month.

“For the most part, people were interested in it and says this might be something worth checking out,” he says.

Mullet says he would likely sign a card if approached but had not yet decided whether he would vote for a union at Harvard.

“I’m inclined to support it,” he says.

Once organizers obtain signatures from 30 percent of potential union members--—in this case graduate student teaching fellows and research assistants—they can file for recognition as a union from the regional office of the NLRB.

If the University protests, the regional office will rule on the union’s eligibility and will then require that a majority of eligible graduate students support unionization in a secret-ballot vote. The university has the option of protesting a regional board decision in favor of the union to a five-member national board, a process that impounds the vote results and can take months.

Brown, Tufts and Columbia are currently awaiting that national board review, which upheld in November 2000 the NYU students’ right to unionize. The board’s make-up has changed with President Bush’s appointment of more conservative members, leading some to speculate that it might overturn the decisions of the previous board as it reviews the upcoming cases.

Friendly Professor of Law Paul C. Weiler, who specializes in labor law, says “it’s not uncommon” for the NLRB to reverse the decisions of previous boards, but adds that graduate student unionization may not be the new board’s focus.

“I don’t know that the Bush board would feel as strongly about this kind of issue as they would, say, about specific obligations that were imposed on employers in dealing with unions,” he says.

Johnson says organizers at Harvard hope to obtain initial signatures from at least 50 percent of eligible graduate students —instead of the required 30 percent—and that she did not know when the UAW might file for recognition on behalf of the teaching fellows.

“There are no dates on the horizon,” she says.

Rein says his knowledge of the petition drive is “word of mouth” and that, when he had asked supporters of graduate student unions to speak at council meetings, none had responded.

Ellison, who wrote that he and other administrators were also aware that the UAW had been looking into forming a graduate student union on campus, added that the administration has not been contacted by organizers.

“It appears to be a pattern on other campuses for the organizing effort to be very clandestine at first, which is itself unfortunate,” he wrote. “If an issue of this magnitude were in fact to be raised on this campus, it would be very important that it be debated as fully and openly as possible, with all views being expressed and heard.”

Johnson says that because the process is still in its early stages, the organizing committee is concentrating on discussion rather than any formal moves.

“Really we’ve been working on talking to other graduate employees to see if people want a union here,” she says. “The goal mostly is to build an organization that wants to decide what to do.”

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.