14/08/2014

Employment law: Graduate rights

US association argues for graduate assistants' right to unionize.

The American Association of University Professors in Washington DC has filed a legal document to the National Labor Relations Board arguing that graduate assistants, including research technicians, at private institutions should be considered employees and should therefore have collective-bargaining rights. The brief argues that the board should revise its definition of employee status, which is based on a 2004 decision that graduate assistants at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, were not employees because their work was inextricably linked to their study. Union representation of graduate assistants is a contentious issue. In 2012, Michigan banned graduate-student research assistants in public universities from unionizing, arguing that giving students employee status would alter the student–teacher relationship. In 2008, research assistants at the Research Foundation of the State University of New York voted to elect union representation after a 2007 board ruling that they were fundamentally employees.


Fonte: NATUREJOBS