blockquote, nerds-style

Resolution Regarding Collective Bargaining Rights of Graduate Student
Teaching and Research Assistants

February 02, 2005

The following
resolution was approved by the CAA membership the Annual Business Meeting on
February 18, 2005, during the 93rd Annual Conference in Atlanta.

WHEREAS, 260,000 teaching and research assistants are currently
identified by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the higher educational
instructional workforce; and

WHEREAS, in 2000 the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) unanimously held that graduate employees at New York
University (NYU) are employees entitled to organize for collective bargaining
under the National Labor Relations Act (Act), prompting collective bargaining
campaigns in a number of private universities; and

WHEREAS, in July
2004, the NLRB in a 3-2 partisan vote overruled the NYU decision in the case of
Brown University, ruling that graduate teaching and research assistants are not
eligible to unionize under the Act; and

WHEREAS, in the words of the
dissenting members of the Board, this decision is "woefully out of touch with
contemporary academic reality... seeing the academic world as somehow removed
from the economic realm that labor law addresses - as if there was no room in
the ivory tower for a sweatshop"; and

WHEREAS, a stated purpose of the
College Art Association (CAA) is to "develop, disseminate and, where
appropriate, implement standards, guidelines, and statements of policy regarding
the activities of the profession(s) and the Association"; and

WHEREAS,
the CAA's guidelines for part-time professional employment affirm the right of
teaching and research assistants to unionize:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the
College Art Association states publicly that

1) we deplore the decision
of the NLRB in this matter, which affects the academic workplaces where our
members are employed,

2) we affirm our support for the collective
bargaining rights of graduate student teaching and research assistants, in art
history, the visual arts, and in other disciplines, and

3) we urge
university administrators to be neutral toward graduate employees' decision to
unionize, and to voluntarily recognize those that show majority support.

Submitted by: Robert S. Slifkin, Yale University
CAA Member