The United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization Monday over a 2004 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that denied collective bargaining rights to graduate assistants at Brown and other private universities.
In that decision, the NLRB, which interprets U.S. labor laws, overturned a ruling made in 2001 that allowed graduate students to form unions. The board, dominated by appointees of President Bush, determined that teaching and lab assistants' connection to Brown University was primarily academic, not economic, and so they are not workers.
"It's shameful that the Bush Labor Board chose to deny the fundamental freedom to join a union and bargain collectively to those tasked with performing critical research and teaching duties at our nation's finest universities," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in a Feb. 26 statement.
This is not the first time NLRB rulings have been challenged by a petition to the ILO, but the ILO's resolutions are not binding.
