President Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has proposed an agency rule change intended to take away graduate student workers’ right to collective bargaining at private universities.
This is a desperate, politically-motivated attempt to reverse the 2016 Columbia decision and stifle the unprecedented momentum of the graduate worker union movement.
Like when we joined together to successfully stop the tuition waiver tax in 2018, we can and must fight back against Trump’s latest attack on graduate workers’ rights. Whether you are a graduate worker or an ally, please make your voice heard.
We have until January 15, 2020 to submit as many comments as possible. Your public comment can help stop this rule and its attack on our union rights.
The best comments are unique. When you write a comment, please answer one of these questions:
- What kind of work do you do as a graduate teacher or researcher? How does your work as an employee advance your university’s research or teaching mission?
- How could you benefit from collective bargaining? Or, how have you already benefited from collective bargaining? (e.g. improved benefits, compensation, workplace rights, better protection against discrimination and harassment)
- Or click here for additional ideas.
- How do you feel this rule would inhibit graduate workers’ right to negotiate fair procedures to address sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination?
- How does your work contribute to the economic viability of your university? (e.g. carrying out research that helps generate and sustain critical grant revenue and intellectual property, teaching classes that would otherwise be taught by others)
- How does your experience show that the University determines significant conditions independently of our faculty mentors? (e.g. establishment or change to health benefits, stipend rates, etc)
- How has your university’s refusal to bargain impacted the research and teaching missions and the work lives of you and your families?
If you want to submit a comment in any other format (eg a photograph or a video), you can email it to us here at comment@gradsfightback.org and we will submit it.
