Matthew Smith (Philosophy, Yale) writes:
"The blow to grad student unionization is disturbing in more ways than just the obvious way in which it deprives employees from the right to collectively bargain and the benefits gained from such bargaining. I don't know what it's like at Texas, but at UNC, where I just got my PhD, an increasing amount of face-to-face teaching is being performed by graduate students. [Leiter: the same is true here.] This trend is recapitulated throughout higher education from the most prestigious private universities to more workaday public universities (see the Yale GESO report "Casual Nation." While this is not prima facie worrisome, it signals a tremendous shift in the way in which higher education is conducted in the US. Such a shift certainly warrants explicit recognition and evaluation, even if the change turns out to be a good thing. The NLRB ruling obscures this shift by suggesting that graduate students' primary role in the university is the role of student. As a consequence, the very important public discussion we ought to be having about the future shape of American higher education faces yet another barrier.
"I say none of this to de-emphasize the significance of union benefits. I worked as a union organizer before and while getting my PhD at UNC-CH and have seen first hand both the tangible and the intangible improvements in people's lives that union activity and union victories have brought. I only write to note that, beyond the immediate loss of these beneifts, there is a broader, systemic (where 'systemic' is not code for 'more important') negative effect that this NLRB ruling will have."
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