Tea Party loses again: NYU grad students defy obstruction in precedent-setting 98% union vote

[DonViejo]

Source: TPM

After right-wing antics and liberal union-busting denied them their union, NYU grad students just won it back

JOSH EIDELSON

The United Auto Workers announced late Wednesday night that graduate students at New York University had voted – by a 49 to 1 margin – to join the union, and make theirs the only private university in the country where grad students bargain collectively over the conditions of their teaching and research work.

In a late night statement, anthropology teaching assistant Natasha Raheja hailed the “huge victory” and said the union was “determined to reach an agreement on a strong union contract by the end of this academic year.” Reached over e-mail, NYU Executive Vice President Robert Berne told Salon the university had stayed neutral “to permit the graduate students to express their views,” and would “now enter what we expect to be productive negotiations with the union.”

As I reported Monday, the vote followed an eight-year struggle set off when NYU announced it would no longer bargain with its grad students, and a months-long strike failed to force the administration to change its stance. While public university graduate student unions are legion (and played key roles in California’s Occupy movement and Wisconsin’s resistance to Scott Walker), NYU had been the first and only private school to recognize a graduate student union. After George Bush National Labor Relations Board appointees voted in 2004 to reverse a Clinton-era precedent and push grad students outside the protections of New Deal labor law, NYU mounted a campaign against the union which the UAW charged would otherwise have been illegal. Past and future Democratic officials Cheryl Mills and Jack Lew – since tapped by the Obama Administration as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff and U.S. Treasury Secretary, respectively – both played roles in NYU’s response to the strike.

While GSOC made Obama’s 2008 election a priority in hopes of winning NLRB appointees who would restore Clinton-era precedent and thus their collective bargaining rights, a mix of Republican obstruction, Democratic recalcitrance, and judicial roadblocks repeatedly pushed back the already-slow timeframe for that hoped-for result. NYU Professor Andrew Ross, who co-edited a volume on the strike, told Salon that with GSOC facing a potential recusal of one of the NLRB’s more pro-labor new members, and NYU’s administration “in a state of siege” over multiple controversies, both sides had a reason to resolve the conflict. Under the deal announced last month, NYU stayed neutral in the election (overseen by the American Arbitration Association), and agreed to recognize and bargain with the union if it won; the UAW agreed to the withdrawal of its NLRB case, and to leave six “hard sciences” departments out of the deal.

:::snip:::

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/tea_party_loses_again_nyu_grad_students_defy_obstruction_in_precedent_setting_98_union_vote/

[valerief]

1. Bravo! nt

[Veilex]

2. "leave six “hard sciences” departments out of the deal"

That part about leaving the hard sciences out of the deal is actually a fairly big loss. Corporatists have been trying to manipulate more and more scientists to their side. This could facilitate that at NYU.

While that may not seem like a big deal, it becomes one more "valid" talking point for the republicans... lending a sense to misguided voters that science is on the side of the GOP.

This worries me quite a bit.

[Rozlee]

3. That would indeed be tragic considering that only 6% of scientists polled

state that they are Republican. Not surprising in a demographic that trends more secular and whose theories are constantly being attacked by conservatives. I wonder what the term "scientist" was expanded to include, i.e., soft sciences such as psychology and sociology or only the harder ones such as physics and chemistry. Plus, if they included doctors, that's probably where a great deal of your 6% comes from.

[yellowcanine]

4. Now we need to have the college football and basketball players organize......

Then the proverbial sh*t would hit the proverbial fan.

The NCAA would not know what hit them. I can here their pious arguments about student athletes already.

[zentrum]

5. Fabulous.

Add to this that the hideous Sexton has gotten a vote of non-confidence from his faculty and we may be making progress at NYU.

They certainly have no conscience when it comes to destroying the historic neighborhood they are located in. Look at how they've ringed the people's park--Washington Square--with monstrous buildings.