Uncertain that they will retain their right to unionize at the federal level, Brown’s Graduate Labor Organization is seeking to codify student workers’ collective bargaining protections in Rhode Island state law.
GLO leaders are preparing for a potential overturning of the 2016 National Labor Relations Board decision that required private colleges and universities to recognize undergraduate and graduate student workers as employees, the union’s president, Michael Ziegler GS, told The Herald.
During President Trump’s first administration, the Trump-controlled board proposed a rule that would have effectively struck down the landmark ruling. It was later withdrawn under former President Joe Biden’s NLRB.
For months, the union’s leaders have worked with the Rhode Island AFL-CIO to help draft statewide legislation extending current unionzation protections if the NLRB excludes student workers from its jurisdiction, Ziegler said.
The legislation was introduced by the Rhode Island House Deputy Majority Leader Arthur Corvese (D-North Providence) in the form of an amendment to the state’s current Labor Relations Act.
Corvese did not respond to requests for comment.
This legislative push is just one of the union’s efforts to prepare for what its leaders see as a threat to their continued bargaining rights under the Trump administration. Last week, GLO and four other Brown unions sent a letter to Provost Francis Doyle asking the University “to continue to recognize all the workers represented by Local 6516 as workers beyond the contracts that are currently in place or being bargained.”
In response to the letter, University Spokesperson Brian Clark told The Herald “we do not work through the news media to address community concerns or questions — rather, we value direct engagement with community members.”
‘A strong likelihood’: Under Trump, the NLRB may reverse 2016 grad union ruling
Rhode Island AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley said that he believes the NLRB will likely reverse its 2016 decision.
Graduate student workers nationwide gained the right to unionize in 2016 when the NLRB ruled in favor of Columbia graduate assistants who had argued that they should be considered employees of the University.
Since then, graduate student unionization has swept across college campuses nationwide.
The NLRB is composed of five members appointed to five-year terms by the president. Over the years, it has grappled with the question of graduate student unionization, and has reversed its standing three times since 2000, including a 2004 ruling in favor of Brown that rolled back some collective bargaining protections for student workers.
But the independent agency has been gridlocked since Jan. 27, when Trump fired a board member for the first time in the board’s 89-year history.
Trump fired Biden-appointed member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the board unable to reach a three-person quorum and setting off a legal battle over the president’s authority to remove a sitting member. Wilcox was confirmed for a five-year term by the Senate in September 2023, and the National Labor Relations Act prohibits the president from firing a board member except in cases of “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
The White House and the NLRB did not respond to requests for comment.
In an interview with The Herald, former NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce said that there is “a strong likelihood” that the Board will attempt to overturn the Columbia decision once it reaches a quorum. Pearce served on the board from 2010 to 2018 and signed on to the majority opinion in the 2016 decision.
What could happen following a reversal
In 2004, under then-President George W. Bush, the NLRB reversed a 2000 decision that sided with NYU graduate assistants. NYU subsequently unrecognized a union of its graduate students.
If the NLRB overturned Columbia, “collective bargaining agreements that have been executed would be honored, but as soon as they expire, universities could very well state that the union should be decertified,” Pearce said.
At Brown, union leaders hope that the University will continue to bargain with them “regardless of what changes might take place at the National Labor Relations Board,” Ziegler said.
But unionized workers are still taking steps to prepare for the possibility that Brown might decline to recognize student unions beyond the expiration of their current contracts.
“It’s a hypothetical that we’re taking seriously,” Ziegler said, adding that GLO has not received an indication that the University will stop recognizing the union.
Shifting attitudes toward unions may be on GLO’s side. Former NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman said in an interview that when Brown and other universities challenged the NYU decision in court, they were “totally missing the concept of this kind of worker having a voice and a say in both economic and other matters which affect their working lives.”
Liebman, who dissented in the NLRB’s 2004 ruling, added that strong opposition from Ivy League schools has subsided since the decision.
GLO has negotiated two contracts with the University since its formation, leading Ziegler to believe that withdrawing recognition would be “risky.”
“You have at this point, people like myself who have experienced all the benefits of working at a unionized workplace,” Ziegler added.
“The longer the period goes where students are represented in schools, the more institutionalized that status is going to become,” Pearce said.
Brown unions seek alternative pathways in state law
House Bill 5187, introduced to the House Labor Committee by Corvese in late January, would expand the definition of “employee” under the state’s labor law to include “teaching assistants, research assistants, fellows, residential assistants and proctors who perform services for an employer.”
If the NLRB were to exclude student workers from its own jurisdiction, the bill would explicitly bring the workers under the jurisdiction of the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board. The RISLRB assumes many of the functions of the NLRB for employees who are excluded from the federal board’s jurisdiction, like public sector employees.
Brown’s student labor unions were “foremost in our thinking when the AFL-CIO began working with its legal team and state legislators to draft the bill,” Crowley said. He called Brown’s student unions some “of the most vulnerable existing unions in the state.”
Liebman called potential state protections “a really interesting idea.”
“If the board actually had a vehicle to overrule Columbia,” finding student workers were not employees, he said, “(I) see no reason why a state couldn’t legislate to cover them.”
Ethan Schenker is a university news editor covering staff and student labor. He is from Bethesda, MD, and plans to study International and Public Affairs and Economics. In his free time, he enjoys playing piano and clicking on New York Times notifications.
