To the Editor:
Kate Gould's March 27 letter to the editor argues against the points I raised earlier about the UAW's attempt to gerrymander the union election. In an attempt to provide an "uncomplicated, essential correction" to my "assertions," she claims that the definition of employee the UAW used to exclude RA's from the bargaining unit
is based in labor law. The UAW was thus forced to passively accept
precedent, despite their earnest desire to include all TA's and RA's in the
unit, and thus, in the election.
This is unconvincing for three uncomplicated, essential reasons.
1. Precedence is an odd thing for people wanting to form a labor union at a private university to rely on. Until as recently as the NYU decision in 2000, precedence established by the Stanford decision held that graduate students at private universities weren't employees and could not unionize. In the American legal system, precedence is a guide, but not an infallible one, which is why faulty decisions are overruled every year.
It is true that some precedent suggested that some, but not all, graduate students are employees, but this very precedence was established by arguments advanced by the UAW to the NLRB at the Brown & NYU hearings. Indeed, the UAW could have conceded the University's arguments that all students should be included in the election, and there would have been no controversy. Instead, the UAW contested the University's claim, and argued that certain students should be excluded.
2. The "legal definition of employee" to which Gould refers covers the very students the UAW seeks to exclude. This was true even before the Columbia decision was handed down. Contrary to what the UAW has argued, all RA's at Tufts provide a service to the University, and are compensated for that service under the supervision of their respective departments.
3. Even if the UAW felt both bound by this definition and that, properly interpreted, it excluded large numbers of Tufts graduate students, ASET representatives had no business arguing their proposed union would democratically represent graduate students, and "leave no graduate student behind." If ASET/UAW truly believed that they were bound by the NYU precedent, why did it solicit signatures from students who they knew would be excluded from the bargaining unit?
Jason Walker
Graduate Student in Philosophy, WHUT member