Campus organizers are hoping that dozens of new unionization campaigns may be on the horizon nationwide following the recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision to withdraw a proposed Trump-era rule that would have barred graduate students from joining a union. During his campaign, President Joe Biden had vowed to “empower the NLRB to fulfill its intended purpose of protecting workers.”
In 2019, the Trump-appointed NLRB proposed a regulation which asserted graduate students shouldn’t be considered employees, regardless of whether or not the students assisted with teaching or research. An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report found that the proposed Trump rule would have stripped collective bargaining rights from 57,500 unionized graduate students and blocked 1.5 million graduate students from forming a union at their school.
Read more at Truthout.