Graduate students at Syracuse University now have the option of unionizing after a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board.

The ruling overturned a decision from 2004 which stated graduate students serving as research or teaching assistants at private universities were considered students, so they would not be entitled to the same union rights as workers, according to The Atlantic’s website.

Both Rajesh Kumar, president of the Graduate Student Organization, and Can Aslan, former GSO president and current GSO vice president of internal affairs, said they had positive individual reactions upon hearing the decision of the NLRB.

“I think it’s a good opportunity, at least we are now legally authorized to have a collective demand,” Kumar said.

Aslan added that the ruling seemed to be a long overdue decision.

The GSO represents about 5,000 graduate students on campus. Unionization would affect about 25 percent of these students, since they are employees of the university, Kumar said.

SU’s GSO passed a resolution last year in favor of exploring the unionization process. Out of 240 responses, 129 were in favor, 30 opposed and the rest requested more clarification or time on the topic.

After exploring the possibility of unionizing, the GSO ultimately decided it was not the best entity to push toward unionization. It suggested that the ad-hoc committee — created to explore the topic — form an autonomous registered student organization, which would allow the work toward unionization support to continue, according to a unionization committee report released by the GSO last year.

If the organization received more widespread support throughout the university, then the GSO would vote on a resolution to support unionization, according to the report.

However, the recent ruling may reopen the conversation about graduate student unions on campus.

“If people who are graduate student employees are willing to unionize, then we will play the role of facilitator,” Kumar said.

The organization has a streamlined process, if a group of people want to pursue this then the GSO will provide different types of support, Kumar said.

Aslan added that the GSO Senate would be able to form an ad-hoc committee to work on the initiative and they would provide the committee with funding.

“(The support is) ideological and financial, I would say,” Kumar said.

Patrick Neary, former GSO president, said there are pros and cons to be considered when thinking about unionizing.

Neary listed the pros as having more power to get higher pay being able to lock in pay increases over several years, coming to agreements on benefits, guarantees about the type of employment and less uncertainty about the future overall.

However, Neary did note some downsides. Reasonable union dues are $1,000, which would be an added cost to graduate students. There are also risks involved when it comes to negotiating with a university, since a union without the same resources as a major institution may not negotiate successfully.

“It really depends on the university environment,” Aslan said. “It depends on the situation graduate workers are in at an institution.”

Previously, the GSO had issues with the university because the university was trying to remove graduate students from the employee health insurance plan. The GSO worked with the university and got the decision reversed, so graduate student employees are still on the plan, Aslan said.

“Possibly one of the most positive aspects of this surrounds graduate employee health insurance, one of the biggest issues at SU, arguably the biggest issue in this arena,” Neary said.

The IRS has been indicating that it is going to force universities to take graduate employees off of employee health insurance pools sometime next year, Neary said. The only thing that he thinks would cause immediate unionization is if employee health insurance were taken away from graduate students employees.

“Across the nation, it’s a very important decision affecting a lot of graduate workers and their right to unionize, so it’s a significant win for graduate workers across the nation,” Aslan said.

Published on September 7, 2016 at 9:49 pm

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