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Higher Education Organizing in the Tank

Labor Relations Ink staff reviews higher education organizing schemes.

The fight to organize graduate students at Harvard has come to a standstill. Although the results of the November election were in favor of unionization, an NLRB hearing is on the books to review objections filed by both parties and to determine whether the challenged ballots should be counted. It is possible that a re-vote will be cast.

Duke University would have been in the same bucket as Harvard had organizers not decided to withdraw their petition to organize. Meanwhile, six Yale departments have voted to form unions. Yale took a different approach than Harvard and Duke and opted to organize in micro-units, rather than as one large union. Arguments for both approaches can be read here.

At Loyola University, faculty members in the Theology Department must now be excluded from a proposed bargaining unit. This comes from a split NLRB decision naming it inappropriate to include Theology Department members in a unit since Loyola is a religious institution.