Graduate Students or Employees? NLRB to Weigh In (Again)

Last week the National Labor Relations Board decided to reconsider whether graduate teaching assistants at private universities should be treated as employees under the National Labor Relations Act. The case, The New School, Case No. 02-RC-143009, involves a UAW petition to organize graduate students at New York’s New School and marks the Obama Board’s latest attempt to re-visit, and likely reverse, its decision in Brown University, 342 NLRB 483 (2004). In Brown, the Board held that graduate students performing teaching and research services are not “employees” within the meaning of Section 2(3) of the Act because their relationship with the university was primarily educational.

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