White Paper

NLRB Allows Student Assistants to Unionize, Signals Commitment to Expanding Its Reach

 
Last month, the National Labor Relations Board (the “NLRB” or “the Board”) reversed standing precedent and held that student assistants at private universities, including both graduate and undergraduate teaching and research assistants, qualify as “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) and may accordingly join unions to collectively bargain with their employers. The case, Columbia University, 364 NLRB 90 (2016), offers yet another indication of the strength of the Board’s commitment to maintaining and expanding its presence in a rapidly changing employment environment – and its willingness to overrule itself to do so.

In Columbia University, the Board considered a petition filed by the Graduate Workers of Columbia – GWC, UAW, to represent graduate and undergraduate teaching and research assistants employed by Columbia University, including those compensated through training grants. The Regional Director who reviewed the petition before it reached the full Board denied the union’s request, relying on the NLRB’s decision twelve years earlier in Brown University, 342 NLRB 483 (2004).

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Lindsay Colvin is an associate in the Labor and Employment Practice Group in the firm's New York office.

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Lindsay Colvin

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP