Cornell student challenges union control over graduate workers in federal labor case

UPDATED

A Cornell University Ph.D. candidate recently filed charges against the university Graduate Student Union to contest its exclusive bargaining authority over the representation of the school’s graduate students.

Russell Burgett submitted his case to the National Labor Relations Board to challenge an Obama-era ruling that allows union bosses to have exclusive bargaining rights at private colleges, according to a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation news release. 

The foundation is representing him in the case. Burgett, who is studying chemical physics, is not a member of the union.

“Campus union officials … should not have the government-granted power to snuff out a graduate student’s academic career just because they don’t want to associate with union bosses and their agendas,” Patrick Semmens with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation told The College Fix.

Burgett’s case argues that graduate students do not qualify as “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act. Therefore, the union’s efforts to enforce a contract requiring students to pay dues or fees to complete essential components of their graduate programs are unlawful.

The university, however, disagrees. Spokesperson Lindsay Knewstub told The College Fix via email Cornell is prepared to defend itself in the case. 

“We are aware of the charges against the Cornell Graduate Student Union, as well as the University, and intend to defend ourselves before the National Labor Relations Board,” Knewstub said. 

But Semmens, the vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, told The Fix Burgett’s charges are clearly in line the National Labor Relations Act. The comments were relayed via NRTW media coordinator Jacob Comello.

“The text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) does not include students in its definition of employees,” he said in an emailed statement.

If graduate students are not classified as employees, the CGSU-UE union’s contract, which prohibits the university from engaging with students who opt out of union affiliation, is an unlawful “secondary agreement” explicitly prohibited under the NLRA, Semmens said. 

The foundation disagrees with a 2016 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board under the Obama administration that recognized Columbia University graduate student workers as employees.

It argues the ruling “overturned longstanding precedent and permitted union bosses to gain monopoly bargaining powers over graduate students at private universities like MIT, Columbia, and Cornell.”

When asked about the ruling, Semmens said the “decision was largely the result of motivated, partisan reasoning by the Board at that time.”

Semmens told The Fix that Burgett’s case builds on a recent antidiscrimination case filed by two Cornell graduate students. 

Jewish students David Rubinstein and Louie Gold filed the federal case against the graduate students’ union and the national United Electrical Workers Union, alleging they were harassed for requesting religious exemptions from paying union dues, The Fix previously reported. 

Semmens said where the two differ is that “the cases for David Rubinstein and Louie Gold are meant to provide immediate help to graduate students who want to escape union financial support on religious grounds.”

Meanwhile, “Mr. Burgett’s case pursues the long-term goal of stripping union bosses of the privilege that allows them to perpetrate such coercion in the first place,” he said. 

Semmens also told The Fix Burgett’s case, if victorious, would have far-reaching effects for graduate students at private universities across the country. 

If the National Labor Relations Board considers Burgett’s case and “neutrally apply law to facts,” Semmens believes that “the Board will stop union bosses from continuing to impose their monopoly bargaining schemes on graduate students.” 

This would effectively liberate graduate students from being compelled to pay dues or align with union leaders to earn their degrees, restoring “a large measure of academic freedom to university campuses,” Semmens said. 

The Fix also reached out to Burgett via email to ask more questions about his case. He did not respond. 

Editor’s note: The name of the NLRB has been corrected to include ‘relations’ instead of ‘review.’