Research and teaching assistants at Columbia University have voted to unionize as the Graduate Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers union, according to a news release issued on Friday by the union.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled in August that graduate students who serve as research and teaching assistants at Columbia were primarily employees, not students, and so could unionize under federal labor law. The ruling reversed a 12-year-old decision involving Brown University, and threw open the doors for graduate students to organize into collective-bargaining units at private colleges and universities.
