With the "discussion period" concluded, NYU has notified the Graduate Student Organizing Committee-UAW that it will not negotiate a new contract with them, but will instead hide behind its Brown decision rights to allow a recognized bargaining unit to instantly lose its bargaining unit status by recess-appointee judicial fiat. NYU is claiming that the union's concerns over who can and cannot TA courses "imperiled the academic rights of the university and its faculty." This seems highly implausible to me. What seems far more likely to "imperil" the "academic rights" of university faculty and students is the adamant support by administrators at NYU, Yale, Penn, and Columbia, to name a few schools of further casualized teaching arrangements and the continuing erosion of job security and the right to a voice on the job. Union busting, as the aftermath of the 1996 GESO grade strike demonstrated, is the single most destructive force against "collegial relationships" and "academic rights," and claims otherwise are immediately suspect.
Prior to annoucing that it would not negotiate, NYU was kind enough to offer the union a contract in which the independent grievance procedure (i.e., the recourse to the American Arbitration Agency) was completely removed. That's a bad faith move if ever there was one. "Accept our joke of a contract which leaves you pretty much crippled, or we walk." I'm insulted, and i'm not even enrolled yet. A grievance procedure in which the union can appeal only to management is not a grievance procedure.
NYU has promised to implement $1,000/year tuition increases over the next three years, to continue to pay health insurance, and to create some sort of GSAesque company union structure to replace the union it's trying to crush.
Should be an interesting few years.
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