The Times Union (Albany, New York), July 12, 2007, Thursday

Copyright 2007 The Hearst Corporation

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The Times Union (Albany, New York)

July 12, 2007 Thursday

1 EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. C1

HEADLINE: Ruling lets graduate students form a union;

Labor activists at UAlbany cheer federal decision that reverses earlier finding by regional director

BYLINE: By MARC PARRY Staff Writer

BODY:

ALBANY - Labor activists broke out banners and balloons Wednesday to celebrate a ruling that allows some graduate student research assistants to unionize.

They rallied at the University at Albany to cheer a decision that directly affects about 2,000 employees of the Research Foundation of the State University of New York working in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse. The private nonprofit foundation administers outside grants for sponsored research programs at SUNY. The employees affected by the case are enrolled at SUNY but draw their paychecks from the foundation, a union leader said.

The ruling by the National Labor Relations Board focused on whether the student assistants have a fundamentally economic or educational relationship to their employer.

The board reversed the deci sion of a regional director who had ruled the research assistants are not employees of the foundation, meaning they would not qualify for collective-bargaining rights.

Graduate students have shouldered more and more of universities' day-to-day work over the past 20 years. The new ruling represents "a rare expansion of bargaining rights for graduate students under the current labor board, appointed by President Bush," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which closely tracks college labor issues.

"It's a victory for graduate students across the country," Arindam Mandal of Communications Workers of America Local 1104 said through a megaphone during a noon rally that drew fewer than 20 people.

The decision contrasts with a major ruling handed down by the NLRB in a related case three years ago. The board ruled then that graduate teaching assistants at Brown University lack collective-bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act because they are students rather than employees.

One Cornell University labor expert argued that the new development opens the door to an appeal of the original ruling and is "the kind of decision that the board will regret because they have muddied their own waters quite significantly."

"People might think it's a small decision, but I think it's an important decision because it lays bare the contradictions in the earlier decision," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Marc Parry can be reached at 454-5057 or by e-mail at mparry@timesunion.com

GRAPHIC: Photo

PHILIP KAMRASS/TIMES UNION JOE FOX of the Capital District Area Labor Federation speaks Wednesday as UAlbany graduate student Arindam Mandal holds a megaphone. PHILIP KAMRASS/TIMES UNION UNION MEMBERS and UAlbany graduate students, from left, Chitrakalpa Sen, Siddhartha Chattopadhyay and Arindam Mandal celebrate their newly won freedom to organize a union.