Can Graduate Students Unionize? The Government Can’t Decide

Last semester, Paul Katz, a third-year Columbia doctoral student who’s working toward a Ph.D. in 20th century Latin American history, was assigned to help teach and grade an undergraduate course on ancient Greece. He hadn’t studied Greek history since high school, and he took time away from his own dissertation work to prepare for the class. “It’s reasonable to view that as a work assignment that I’d been given, not to pretend that this is about my development as a scholar and teacher,” Katz says. He’s joined other Columbia graduate students in petitioning the federal government for the right to unionize as they seek higher pay and other concessions, including better health benefits, for the teaching and research they do while pursuing their degrees.

The National Labor Relations Board is expected to rule sometime this summer. Katz and his co-workers have petitioned to join the United Auto Workers. The AFL-CIO has also weighed in on their behalf. “They’re providing a service and receiving compensation,” says AFL-CIO general counsel Craig Becker, who served on the NLRB during President Obama’s first term. “It’s up to them to decide whether, even though they’re also students, they think they would benefit from collective bargaining.”