They work us hard as students, and they work us hard as teachers. There has to be some type of balance, and that isn't recognized by the university. Graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Brandeis began unionization drives in the past few weeks. A majority of Brown University's 650 graduate teaching and research assistants petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a formal vote on collective bargaining. Students at NYU are the first in a private insitutition to gain union recognition.
Unionization is even more popular at public institutions.
While the NLRB does not cover public empoyees, ten states allow graduate students at public universities to unionize. Ninety-five percent of graduate students at Temple University voted in April to join the American Federation of teachers. 3300 graduate students at Penn State started a unionization drive, and 1500 at Michigan State formed a union at the end of April. The success of graduate students has encouraged numerous part-time faculty organizing efforts. In the past two years thousands of part-timers at California community colleges have chosen collective bargaining.