Frustrated graduate students working as research or teaching assistants seeking additional workers’ rights and benefits suffered a blow this summer after a federal board reversed a 2000 ruling and decided that such students don’t have a right to form unions.

The National Labor Relations Board made public July 15 its ruling that 450 graduate students at Brown University could not be represented by the local chapter of the United Automobile Workers union.

The board concluded in a 3-2 decision that unions are “designed to cover economic relationships” and that graduate students spend most of their time studying instead of working.

“Because they are first and foremost students, and their status as a graduate student assistant is contingent on their continued enrollment as students, we find that they are primarily students,” the ruling said.

Ongoing campaigns to join the UAW by students at Columbia, Tufts and Yale universities likely are to be hurt by the ruling.

Teaching and research assistants at Northwestern agree that they deserve better negotiations with the university, but some doubt whether unions are the best or most realistic way to achieve their goals.

Nicholas Baker, a history department TA, said he is “fairly dubious about organized labor anyways” but does understand why graduate assistants would want to form unions.

Baker, a third-year doctoral candidate, said graduate assistants at NU do not receive healthcare and are offered NU’s health plan at a higher rate than undergraduate students. Although this also is true for many other schools, Baker said it still is frustrating.

“I can understand that feeling that if you’re an employee of the university you should get health benefits at least,” he said.

Jonathan Adler, a third-year psychology doctoral candidate, teaches workshops for incoming TA’s and has been exposed to assistants from many departments. He said he understands the struggles of graduate assistants who want to unionize.

“I can certainly understand TAs wanting to avoid getting into potentially exploitative situations,” he said. “But I think it would be better, ideally, if TAs could deal with their issues on a department or university level, as opposed to a national union level.”

Adler said it would be best for negotiations to be made on a lower level because each department uses assistants differently.

“It ranges from basically not using them at all to other departments where TAs are expected to take on a lot of responsibility,” Adler said.

Although each department may not use their teaching assistants the same way, all teaching assistants in Weinberg are paid the same stipend — $1,573 a month, before taxes, for the 2004-05 school year.

The labor board’s ruling reversed a 2000 decision that allowed students at New York University to unionize.

Because of that decision, New York University is the only private university in the country to have a union for its graduate research and teaching assistants.

New York University officials said they are not yet sure whether they will continue to work with their students’ union.

The labor board’s ruling only affects private universities, since public universities are governed by state law.

Reach Jaime Griesgraber at [email protected].