Student-teacher or teacher-student?

The National Labor Relations Board has decided that graduate TA's at private universities do not have the right to unionize. This is basically tantamount to telling GESO (the fledgling union wannabe at my alma mater) and its cohort to "Go cheney themselves."

Now I have to admit that this is one argument where I can see both sides fairly easily, as I have been both a research assistant and a teaching assistant. However, the principal difference between me and the typical teaching assistant seeking unionization privileges is that I work in the sciences and engineering, and the typical teaching assistant is in the humanities.

The consequences of this are large. Many humanities graduate students rely on TA positions for the bulk of their funding throughout their graduate careers, while most science graduate students TA for a very limited term--usually not more than one year. Consequently, the right to unionize would have a much larger impact on humanities students.

The main question to be decided, though, is: "Are teaching assistants students or employees?" I think that's a difficult question to answer with a simple "yes" or "no." Science students, who are usually supported by research grants, generally TA as part of a funding deal for the first year, or as part of their program requirements. Most people falling into this category probably shouldn't be considered as employees, then--at least not for their teaching duties. [More on this point below, however.] For graduate students in the humanities, when teaching becomes their primary duty--more than research or any other activity--then they have a case that they are employees.

Where conflict starts to arise is that research students in the sciences should have as much right to unionize as the students who are teaching assistants. Both of them are the bedrock on which many private research universities depend to fill their teaching and research needs. If one restricts attention to teaching assistants, then one does research assistants a disservice. That was one of the problems with GESO--they generally made it clear that RA's were not fully welcome in the organization. This caused a great schism in support--the science students, as a result of this rejection, later turned the tables on GESO by rejecting their internal poll for unionization last year.

The other problem I have against the unionization efforts is the tactics employed by the union organizers. They attempt to treat the situation as if they are already a union, and use rather boorish and obnoxious strategies to convince people that they should have the right to unionize. [This is about a smart a strategy as waking undergraduates up at 7.30 am and hoping that they'll petition the university to settle with the unions.]

All in all, though, I guess my position has to be that if any unionization is to take place--an idea I'm not entirely sold on in any case--it has to encompass both teaching assistants and research assistants. Otherwise, it's creating an even more unequal system than the one already in existence.