Update: Graduate Employee Status Stands
8/7/97
Dear GESO supporter,
As you may have heard, there has been a recent development in the case brought by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Yale University on behalf of GESO, the graduate teacher's union on this campus.
The Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) had been filed by the NLRB in November, and had been based on three determinations by the NLRB's General Counsel: (1) that graduate students who teach at Yale have protected workplace rights; (2) that the grade strike of 1995-96 was a protected form of job action; and (3) that therefore Yale's reprisals (ranging from a job lock-out to threats of blacklisting, expulsion and even deportation) were illegal.
Last week, after six weeks of trial, Administrative Law Judge Michael Miller recommended that the ULP be dismissed, based on Yale's argument that the grade strike was a "partial strike" and that therefore Yale had the legal right to engage in reprisals. He then transferred the case to the full NLRB in Washington, D.C. Most importantly, however, Judge Miller left standing the landmark within the General Counsel's November determinations: that graduate teachers are *employees* with the right to unionize. This remains a huge precedent that should encourage other graduate students at private universities to organize.
The judge's decision does not spell the end of the Unfair Labor Practice, although it does mean that its forum will shift from a courtroom in New Haven to the NLRB's boardroom in Washington. The NLRB may very well dissent from the judge's recommendation on this technical point, in which case the case will be remanded back to New Haven, and the trial will pick up where it left off--with Yale administrators called to testify.
Yale's motion-to-dismiss had been based on a legal technicality brought retrospectively to bear on the grade strike. Labor law does not protect workers who engage in "partial strikes," where strikers perform some actions and refuse to perform others. Yale argued that, in order to be protected, those who refused to submit final grades should also have explicitly refused to write recommendations, hold review sessions, and teach for Yale in the near future. Yale argued that those on strike were threatened with blacklisting, firing, and expulsion only because the grade strike was a "partial strike."
Yale's recent motion-to-dismiss was ironically a signal that they had been losing on the employee issue. In April, at the start of the trial, Yale filed a previous motion-to-dismiss that claimed graduate teachers were students, not employees. Judge Miller refused to grant the motion--and after six weeks in the courtroom, the evidence on our employee status was stronger than ever. So Yale switched tactics and assumed, for purposes of argument, that we *were* employees--in which case we have the right to strike, but not the right to "partial strike."
As always, thank you for your support and interest in this issue; you can rest assured that organizing here at Yale is continuing apace. If you have any questions or concerns, please write back. We are still awaiting the judge's full decision, which should clarify the legal issues involved.
Yours sincerely,
Scott Saul, GESO Research Director
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This page was last updated on: November 5, 1999 |
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Graduate Employees and Students Organization |
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