Labor Groups Protest Student Labor Rule

[Judi Lynn]

Labor Groups Protest Student Labor Rule

By WILL LESTER
The Associated Press
Monday, February 26, 2007; 3:51 PM

WASHINGTON -- Labor groups filed a complaint with a U.N. agency Monday about a federal decision that graduate assistants at private universities do not have the right to form unions.

The AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers complained to the International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, about a July 2004 decision by the National Labor Relations Board denying teaching assistants the right to organize. The unions say that decision violates workers' rights under international labor standards. Any ILO decision on the complaint would not overturn U.S. law.

The NLRB, dominated by President Bush appointees, ruled in 2004 that about 450 graduate teaching and research assistants at Brown University in Providence, R.I., could not be represented by the United Auto Workers because they were students, not employees.

That decision overturned the board's unanimous ruling in 2000 that let 1,500 graduate teaching assistants join a union at New York University, a private school where teaching assistants had organized.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/26/AR2007022600805.html

[Bill McBlueState]

1. right to organize

This is as about as direct a confrontation you'll get on the right of workers to organize. DUers should consider boycotting NYU and other universities that refuse to negotiate with their teaching and research assistants.

[BayCityProgressive]

2. More chipping away

at what little shreds of workers rights we have left.

[Omaha Steve]

3. Good post

Thanks for the info!

[Bill McBlueState]

4. kick

[blockhead]

5. NLRB is a joke.

:kick: