NLRB Hands Big Win to Local 1104, Grad Students

In a big, long-awaited victory for CWA Local 1104 and graduate students working at a private research foundation, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that the students are employees and entitled to union representation and collective bargaining.

The ruling immediately affects more than 2,000 research assistants, support specialists and other employees of the Research Foundation at the State University of New York, who have been working with Local 1104 to organize for over six years. Ballots from elections held in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse between 2002 and 2004 will begin being counted by NLRB officials next week.

"The decision of the board properly recognizes that the Research Foundation is a private employer and its employees deserve the rights guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act," Local 1104 President George Bloom said.

CWA leaders said they are optimistic about the vote count, though they are disappointed that it has taken so long for the students to have their union rights upheld. "I am confident that after the ballots are counted we will be calling them brothers and sisters," District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton said. "CWA will then start the all-important task of gaining the respect on the job and securing the working conditions that only can be accomplished through collective bargaining."

The win comes three years after a major NLRB case was decided against graduate students serving as teaching assistants at Brown University, a private school. In that case, the NLRB ruled that the workers were not employees but students who don't have bargaining rights. The case didn't affect the thousands of graduate students CWA already represents on public campuses, including 5,000 Local 1104 members at SUNY.

In the CWA case, the NLRB found that because the students are working at a private foundation that is not part of the university system, they should be treated as employees with union rights. "The undisputed evidence demonstrates the existence of an economic relationship" between the students and the research foundation "rather than an educational relationship as in Brown," the board said.

The case was decided by a three-member panel of the five-member, Republican-majority board. Democrat Dennis Walsh and Republican Peter Kirsanow were in support; board Chairman Robert Battista voted against the union.

Brooks Sunkett, CWA vice president for public, health care and education workers, said the decision "will impact cases around the country, that's why it's so important. It sends a clear message to other workers that they, too, can have a union voice. It's encouraging to know that we can go out and organize them – and we will."