Graduate Student Unions: Organizing in a Changed Academic Economy

The past few years have witnessed a dramatic boom in organizing among academic employees, particularly graduate student teachers. This movement has come in response to trends toward corporatization of higher education over the past twenty years, trends including casualization of teaching staff, commercialization of research, and commodification of instruction. The graduate student movement won an important victory in 2001 when the NLRB recognized the employee status of teaching assistants on private sector campuses. Administrators are now working to undo this precedent and hoping for help from a Bush Labor Board. Graduate student successes have helped spur increased organizing among adjunct instructors and faculty. As we look to the near future, the central question is whether the union movement will be able to reverse the trends of corporatization that threaten to fundamentally reshape American universities.