Opinion: Stanford graduate students should back unionization effort

The unionization of graduate students: Which side are you on, and why?

In recent decades, universities throughout the country have increasingly relied on graduate and sometimes undergraduate student assistants for the purpose of teaching, grading and research. These students perform a variety of functions, many of which were previously done by tenure track academics. It is much cheaper to employ the former rather than the latter group.

For a little more than a century, the public policy of the United States has been the promotion of freedom of association of workers to band together so that they can bargain collectively with their employer. But because of the law’s weaknesses and frequent inadequate union resources and energy, these promises have been rarely realized, with less than 6% of workers in the private sector represented by unions. Growing American inequality is, in part, attributable to the absence of organized labor.

Now, Stanford University graduate students, assistants and fellows employed at a well-endowed leading teaching and research institution will test the law as they seek to organize into a union so as to enhance the voice and economic status of this group. Today’s movement at Stanford is part of the recent and modest uptick in union-organizing efforts. In this case, like “gig” workers and university athletes, tradition has categorized them outside the “employee” definition in labor law and the social safety net in the United States. Though students have been covered by labor law for years when they worked in the cafeteria, library or performed janitorial functions, graduate students alone (except for athletes) were viewed as students only and not as employees.

In 2016, however, the Obama-appointed National Labor Relations Board (which has jurisdiction over such matters) changed all of this and, as a result, organizing and collective bargaining for graduate and undergraduate teaching and research students has flourished in universities such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, Worcester Tech, Fordham and the University of Southern California. (Indeed, student resident assistants overseeing campus life have recently organized in Wesleyan, Boston University, Tufts and Mount Holyoke.)

And dramatic collective gains have been made in the public sector where the University of California, albeit after a lengthy strike, has negotiated double-digit increases and paid family leave for eight weeks at 100%, as well as health care improvements. How will Stanford respond?

Rice University announced a raise in stipends for Ph.D students to at least $32,000 starting on this July 1. Stanford in December announced a one-time additional stipend of $1,000 for funded doctoral students in the School of Medicine and the School of Humanities and Sciences. Both are attempting to get ahead of the unionization curve and preempt union demands. But it is quite possible that Stanford, like Starbucks and Amazon, will resist unionization through the sticks of threats, coercion, etc., rather than merely the carrot. Stanford has fought union organizing in the past.

But students should join the union and vote “yes” in an NLRB election (if one is held) to support union representation. In these post-Jan. 6 days, democracy in the workplace is as vital as it is in the political process itself. A vote for the union and collective bargaining means support for a student-employee voice through a genuine grievance process and arbitration as the final step that is truly neutral and independent. It means a collective voice here at Stanford that can give student employees an opportunity to participate in the shaping of their future wages and benefits. It means a chance for people to band together for their best prospects for a good life at this university.

William B. Gould IV is the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Stanford Law School. He served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994-98. His most recent book is “For Labor to Build Upon: Wars, Depression and Pandemic.”