Graduate Students Win The Right to Unionize

FEATURING JOSH EIDELSON – The National Labor Relations Board recently handed a major victory for graduate student workers, voting 3 to 1 to allow them to join unions. Student workers at public universities had already had that right, but for years, private school graduate students working as research or teaching assistants were kept from unionizing.

Private schools justified their opposition to unionizing by citing “academic freedom,” claiming that the paid work that graduate students did was meant to benefit their education more than their personal finances. Still, universities rely heavily on the labor of graduate students.

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Josh Eidelson, covers politics, policy, and labor for Bloomberg Businessweek. His work has appeared at outlets including The Washington Post, Reuters, and Slate.