New GSG committee to conduct research on unionization
Marcia Brown, Rose Gilbert, and Jeff ZymeriAfter the Aug. 23 ruling from the National Labor Relations Board allowing graduate students to form unions on private university campuses, the Graduate Student Government organized a Unionization Fact Finding Committee to provide answers to questions graduate students might have about the possibility of unionizing.“We’re trying to show students exactly what unionizing means,” Daniel Vitek, chair of the committee, said.Vitek is also the Academic Affairs chair of the GSG.While the GSG is constitutionally bound not to encourage graduate student unionization, Vitek noted, it has focused on providing impartial information on the issue of unionization for students interested in the issue.“We’re not unionizing, we’re fact-finding,” he said.Vitek added that there’s “not a lot of institutional knowledge among our peer private institutions about how do you go about unionizing.”The committee will conduct an impartial research on the relevant questions and compile the results into a report before the end of fall semester.