After more than two years of organizing efforts, student employees at The New School are now steps away from reaching their goal of becoming a union, despite some resistance from administration.
On April 7, the National Labor Relations Board said the university’s teaching assistants, research assistants and tutors could join SENS-UAW to collectively bargain a new contract with The New School.
However, on April 22, The New School’s attorneys issued a request for review to the NLRB stating that the previous decision should be further inspected because it is “clearly erroneous” based on the university’s claim that some student workers, including course assistants, all undergraduate student assistants, and certain Masters and PhD student assistants, are only temporary or casual employees.
“It’s hard for me to see the administration, who I know has a fair amount of money, fighting so hard against students that are just trying really hard to learn and contribute to the school,” said Chandler Gandy, an undergraduate student at Lang. “It feels really wrong.”
On May 3 and 4, the vote will be held in the lower level lobby of 6 E. 16th St, despite The New School’s recent request. If a simple majority votes to unionize, The New School will be legally required to recognize SENS-UAW as a union and must bargain with its representatives.
“If union representation is approved, all students in the covered positions will be represented by SENS-UAW and will become members of SENS-UAW according to the terms of a collective bargaining agreement,” said New School President David Van Zandt in a blast email he sent students Friday about the upcoming vote. The president also encourages all students to cast their vote to have their voices be heard and said the the request for review will not delay or interfere with this week’s voting in any way.
However, organizers feel the administration’s actions regarding the request for review and previous resistance are counter to the university’s public statements on the unionization.
“The New School administration continues to act completely nonchalant about this whole process, publicly pretending that it is on our side and there is no antagonism, while continuing to pay corporate lawyers tens of thousands of dollars to quietly stab our effort in the back using legal procedures that the students don’t see. It is two-faced and shameful what the administration is doing,” said Mark Rafferty, a first year economics student pursuing his MA and union organizer.
According to the SENS-UAW website, the student workers are unionizing because “[they] currently have yearly competitions for precarious jobs that lack a living wage, health benefits, and sick days, while often requiring unpaid overtime hours. We want to change that by addressing these and other concerns through collective bargaining.”
The NLRB decision comes after it approved the right to vote for a similar case involving Columbia University student employees in August. This historic case overturned a previous 2004 ruling with Brown University that denied recognition of students at private universities as employees. The Columbia case gave student workers across all private universities the right to collectively bargain with their employer.
However, The New School stated that the Columbia case was not applicable to its grad workers because unlike students workers at Columbia, New School graduate assistants “constitute temporary or casual employees,” according to the NLRB case document. The NLRB ruled that The New School did not have adequate evidence to prove their position.
Though the university’s attorneys rebuked aspects of this decision with their request for review, administrators have also said that they respect the board’s position.
“We respect the NLRB’s ruling regarding union representation for graduate assistants and other student positions, and we look forward to hosting the union election on May 3 and 4. We encourage all eligible students to participate in this binding vote, regardless of their view on union membership,” administrators said.
In his university-wide email President Van Zandt said, “The New School also has asked the NLRB to review one, limited aspect of its recent decision regarding a potential union of student employees. This request for review focuses solely on which specific positions at the university should be included in a potential union.”
According to the request, “temporary employees are those without a sufficient community of interest to be included in the putative unit of regular full-time employees.” Student workers who have “uncertain tenure” are designated temporary and thus should not be members of the Union it argues.
“It’s not specific positions, it’s more the idea that there are some people who are quickly in and out in the workforce, they don’t have the same interests say as a PhD student who has a fellowship or stipend,” Van Zandt said to the The New School Free Press.
SENS-UAW was previously organizing a strike authorization vote, but are now happy to channel their efforts into organizing for the union election.
“I think the ultimate goal is for student workers to have the power to bargain with the university, and be recognized for the work they do,” Rafferty said. “One of things I’ve learned as a student here is that they help make this place run as much as professors or other staff do and they should be given the same respect.”
SENS-UAW has garnered support from politicians such as Mayor Bill de Blasio, Congressman Jerry Nadler, and Senator Bernie Sanders. “I look forward to hearing the results of the election and to working with you toward a more just and equitable city for all New Yorkers,” de Blasio said.
Faculty members are also supporting SENS-UAW in their right to vote. On April 27, they delivered a statement of support to President Van Zandt in hopes that it will “send a strong public message to both students and the administration” about this cause. The statement has more than 100 signatures and counting.
Although this has been a long and frustrating process for students, they appear more determined than ever to make a difference.
Tania Aparicio, a third-year Ph.D student at The New School for Social Research studying sociology, got involved with this organization three years ago.
“I would like to have a regular contract. I would like to know that I’m going to have a job next semester,” Aparicio said. “One year I didn’t hear about my job until a week before the semester was starting, and at that point I was already thinking of taking a leave of absence, starting to sublease my apartment, and trying to figure out what I would do that year because I can’t afford to live in New York without working.”
Another Ph.D student in the sociology department, Sidra Kamran, has been very dedicated to this fight. “I strongly believe that we should be organizing at our academic workplaces. We should be trying to bring our progressive values to the places that we work in. Universities are not exempt in any way from providing basic rights for their workers,” she said.
If a majority votes yes to unionizing, the next step will be electing a representative bargaining committee to begin contract negotiations with administrators.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the place of the union vote to be University Center, as sited in the NLRB case decision document. The voting location has since changed to the lower lobby of 6 E. 16th St. and the article has been updated accordingly.
Photo by Orlando Mendiola.