A DU member was on the NYU picket line.
http://media.www.nyunews.com/media/storage/paper869/news/2008/04/22/Citystate/Bill-Would.Give.Tas.At.Nyu.Right.To.Unionize-3340769.shtmlLegislation proposed to Congress last Thursday would allow teaching assistants at private universities to unionize.
The legislation, named the Teaching and Research Assistants Collective Bargaining Rights Act, amends the National Labor Relations Act. The amendment would change the definition of "employee" in the original NLRA to include all teaching and research assistants at private educational institutions like NYU.
This proposal comes three years after a strike by graduate assistants rocked NYU's campus. In the same year, strikes were organized by Columbia and Yale universities' teaching assistants, and since then, dozens of other strikes have occurred on campuses across the country. NYU's strike ended in spring 2006 without the university recognizing the TA union.
The strike at NYU was led by the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, a labor union representing all research and teaching assistants at the university. Andrew Ross, a professor of American Studies who fiercely criticized NYU's administration during the strike, said he thinks the new legislation is heading in the right, and moral, direction.
"Whether or not the bill is successful, I think it is only a matter of time before the legal climate shifts back to supporting the common sense position that graduate assistants are employees and that they have a democratic right to choose union representation," Ross said.
The new bill was drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Rep. George Miller of California, head of the House Education and Labor Committee.
FULL story at link.