(The Center Square) – The United Auto Workers withdrew a petition to the National Labor Relations Board to unionize Vanderbilt University’s graduate students.
The union decision comes after a federal court said a request from the UAW and the Labor Relations Board for personal student information presented a conflict with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Three students were represented by the National Right to Work Foundation.
“Many of my colleagues and I simply want to pursue our academic studies, and oppose not only UAW organizers having our private contact information, but also being forced to associate with a union at all in order to earn our graduate degrees,” said one of the graduate students, identified as Jane Doe 1 in the legal filings. “The withdrawal of UAW organizers’ petition seeking a vote to unionize us against our will is a welcome victory for us in our defense of our rights and the rights of our fellow graduate students.”
The comment was provided by the National Right to Work Foundation.
Vanderbilt’s position is that graduate students are students and do not meet the definition of an employee, the university said.
“The union’s decision to withdraw its petition and demand provides a path for us to move forward together,” C. Cybele Raver, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs and C. André Christie Mizell, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School said in an email to students. “Vanderbilt’s leadership remains deeply committed to listening to your feedback and enhancing your experience as a vital part of our academic community.”
More than 150,000 graduate students belong to unions, and 41,460 of the students are in California, according to the 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education from The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions according to a previous report from The Center Square. The number of union graduate student employees in private institutions is almost double that of public institutions.
“While we’re happy that the private information of Vanderbilt grad students is now secure from prying union eyes, it’s clear from both that case and many other cases that Foundation attorneys are litigating for grad students around the country that union monopoly bargaining power has no place in the academic sphere,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union bosses were able to get a foothold at colleges and universities as the result of biased rulings from the NLRB under Obama and Biden, which has jeopardized not only academic freedom, but also religious freedom, and federal protections that students rely on for privacy and security.”
