I know that this issue does not have an immediate impact on our conditions at Kutztown or faculty at PASSHE universities, but it is no less than momentous in the struggles of graduate teaching assistants at private universities.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chair, Wilma Liebman, announced this week that unions could expect the NLRB to back collective bargaining rights for graduate teaching assistants at private universities now that the board has a series of new appointments made by the Obama administration. This is a HUGE shift. In 2004, after a Bush Administration stacked NLRB effectively shut down graduate TA organizing with a highly politicized party-line vote. In that 2004 ruling, the NLRB ruled that graduate teaching assistants are “primarily students” not teachers. That ruling flies in the face of the structural reliance upon graduate teaching assistants to staff their general education course.
In short, Leibman’s announcement is cause for caution celebration as we await the first case of graduate teaching assistant bargaining rights to come to the board. Here is the link to the article in today’s Inside Higher Education:
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