Experts have said that NLRB should not be the one making this decision against unions. They should not be able to determine who is a worker and who is not.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an organization responsible for coming up with US labors regulations has ruled that it will no longer be possible to register grad students organizations as labor unions. This comes amid increased registration of students unions across the country.
Before the law came into effect, grad students had an easy task for unionizing. This meant that they could enjoy some benefits and protections that come with this registration.
The most hit students are from private universities who have been at the forefront of fighting for the rights of students to unionize. NLRB is now expected to have a 60-day public comment on the matter, after that, they will go forward with implementing these new laws.
In the past NLRB has always judged these cases on a case to case bases and has never come up with a blanket set of rules. This time however things have changed with the propositions not allowing for students unionization. It is however not surprising to many who argue that the decision is political. The organization’s current structure is mostly composed of conservatives board members who are not shunning away from making rules that undermine unions. They are overruling the precedents that had expanded workers rights.
Eligibility to register as unions
Example of their past ruling on a case to case basis is demonstrated by a ruling of Columbia University in 2016 and Brown University in 2004. In the case of 2016, they ruled that the students who received some form of compensation for teaching and research were eligible to register as a union. However, in 2004, they had ruled in a case involving Brown University that the students with the same set of conditions should not be legally able to unionize. The ruling of 2004 was also overruling a decision in 2000 which had granted students to unionize in New York University.
These rules are expected to hurt the students because they will no longer be able to meet their needs because of their limited rights. One student, Claudio Gonzáles, a Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Chicago in Illinois who serves as the union’s co-president, is quoted as saying,
The whole point of us [unionizing] is we have very material, very immediate needs that are not being met.
Experts have said that NLRB should not be the one making this decision. They should not be able to determine who is a worker and who is not. It is only the US congress that is mandated in determining who is and who is not a US employee under the current labour laws. They all agree that this new law is usurping the congressional prerogative
