Press Releases
01/15/2020
Attorney General Tong Opposes Trump Administration Rule that Would End the Right of Student Workers to Bargain Collectively
(Hartford, CT) -- Attorney General William Tong this week joined a coalition of 12 other attorneys general from across the country calling on the Trump Administration to withdraw a proposed rule that would deny student teaching and research assistants at private colleges the right to organize and bargain collectively.
At issue is a rule proposed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would exclude student workers from the definition of “employee” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and thereby deprive them of the NLRA’s protections for labor organizing and collective bargaining.
Graduate student assistants handle a significant amount of the teaching work at private colleges and universities. The proposed rule would reverse a 2016 NLRB ruling that such student workers qualify as employees under NLRA, and are therefore able to organize into unions and bargain collectively. Student workers at public colleges and universities have been bargaining collectively with the institutions that employ them since the late 1960s.
"Universities are shifting an ever increasing workload onto graduate student teachers and research assistants, and these student workers deserve the right to bargain collectively for fair compensation and working conditions. Student workers at public institutions have been successfully bargaining for over half a century, and there is no reason to deny this right to their counterparts at private institutions. This rule is a harmful and unnecessary overreach and should be rescinded," said Attorney General Tong.
In a letter to the NLRB, the coalition of attorneys general calls the effort to end collective bargaining by private college teaching and research assistants “an assault on workers’ rights.”
The rule could lead to an “exhausted and underpaid student workforce,” the letter states, and deter promising students from pursuing academic careers. That, in turn, could harm businesses, non-profits and governmental institutions “that depend on student workers for innovative teaching and research.” The letter also assails the proposed rule as one that oversteps the NLRB’s statutory reach, infringes on the legislative authority of Congress, and is contrary to the text of the NLRA.
Furthermore, to the extent that state courts and labor relations boards often look to federal law when interpreting state labor relations statutes, this rule could have implications for student workers at public colleges and universities as well.
The letter notes that many student workers struggle to make ends meet “on a subsistence-level stipend,” while balancing teaching and research duties with their own course work and family commitments. For such student workers, the letter asserts, the ability to organize and bargain collectively is “essential” to securing decent pay and living conditions.
To illustrate the dollars-and-cents reality of the issue, the letter points out that the annual mean wage for a graduate teaching assistant in the New York City metropolitan area is $38,370 - well below what the Economic Policy Institute considers an adequate standard of living for the region ($51,323).
“This chasm between wages and living costs has forced many student workers – especially those with families and limited financial resources – to rely on debt and outside employment,” the letter observes.
Contrary to the NLRB’s vision of organized student workers interfering with the academic authority of faculty and administrators, history shows student workers at public colleges and universities have typically focused on such traditional labor issues as wages, working conditions, leave time and employee benefits.
“The Board need not continue down this misguided path,” the letter asserts. “Instead, it should withdraw the proposed rule and allow the process of collective bargaining at private colleges and universities to continue unimpeded.”
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