Trump's Labor Board Turns Ivy League Schools Against Each Other

Source: Bloomberg


Brown circumvents the NLRB to allow graduate students to pursue a union, while Columbia fights to end their bargaining rights.

By Josh Eidelson
June 21, 2018, 2:02 PM CDT

Brown University has agreed to a path for graduate students to win collective bargaining rights without going through President Donald Trump’s National Labor Relations Board, deepening a divide among America’s top universities about whether to bargain with unions or choose all-out opposition.

Under an agreement signed Thursday with the American Federation of Teachers, if at least 30 percent of Brown graduate assistants in a proposed bargaining unit sign union cards at the Providence, Rhode Island, school, the American Arbitration Association will hold a vote on unionization. If the union wins, Brown will recognize it and negotiate “in good faith.”

While the deal doesn’t bar the university from arguing against unionization, it offers the union a way to win recognition without going through the Republican-controlled NLRB. In 2016, when the board was majority-Democratic, it ruled in favor of graduate student teachers’ and researchers’ right to unionize. But under Trump, unions seeking to organize those workers have abandoned the NLRB, for fear of providing it an opportunity to establish a new precedent reversing the Obama-era rule.

Brown’s decision follows an announcement last month that Harvard University would begin collective bargaining with the United Auto Workers, rather than contest the results of an April election in which its graduate students voted to join the union.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/trump-s-labor-board-turns-ivy-league-schools-against-each-other