Student Unionizing Past Rebuts NLRB Plan to End It, Groups Say

Decades of collective bargaining in higher education show the National Labor Relations Board’s proposal to take away unionizing rights from students working as research and teaching assistants lacks empirical support, opponents of the board’s plan said.

Unions, advocacy organizations, research groups, and state attorneys general told the NLRB that evidence shows unionizing at private universities doesn’t threaten academic freedom or compromise the student-professor relationship. Student worker collective bargaining at public colleges goes back half a century, dozens of schools currently have labor deals with unions, and several federal agencies and laws treat student assistants as employees, they said.

The NLRB ...