UNIONS FILE COMPLAINT AGAINST U.S. GOVERNMENT

Academe, Mar/Apr 2007 by Bradley, Gwendolyn

The AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers filed a complaint in February against the United States government with the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations. The complaint alleges that a 2004 decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the Brown University case violates workers' rights to the freedom of association under internationally recognized labor standards. The NLRB, which is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the National Labor Relations Act, found that graduate employees at Brown University were not employees as defined under the act because they were also students and therefore that they had no right to bargain collectively. The decision, which was made by a majority composed entirely of recent appointees of the current administration, overturned a previous, unanimous ruling holding that teaching and research assistants at New York University were employees entitled to collective bargaining. The Brown decision put up a major barrier to graduate-employee organizing at private universities; as a consequence of it, the NYU administration stopped recognizing its graduateemployee union last year.

The complaint alleges that the Brown ruling violates two provisions of the ILO's conventions: Convention 87, which says that workers, "without distinction whatsoever, shall have the right to establish and . . . to join organizations of their own choosing" and Convention 98, which says that measures should be taken "to encourage . . . voluntary negotiation between employers or employers' organizations and workers' organizations, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by means of collective agreements."

In November, the AFL-CIO filed a complaint with the ILO protesting another NLRB decision that limited workers' rights. In that decision, one of three cases collectively known as the Kentucky River cases, the NLRB broadened the definition of a supervisor, extending it to many workers who have no actual supervisory power, but who would be prohibited by the label from the freedom to bargain collectively. It remains to be seen how this ruling will affect the academy, but it is likely that it will further hinder faculty organizing at private institutions (where many faculty are excluded under the 1980 Supreme Court Yeshiva ruling). It is also likely that the Kentucky River ruling will create a new bar to unionizing academic professionals and other campus workers at private institutions. (See "The Hits Keep Coming" on page 86 of the January-February issue.)

-G.B.