Duke Ph.D. students can move forward with unionizing vote despite university objections
Doctoral students at Duke University have the right to unionize as employees of the university, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Monday, a victory in the students’ lengthy effort to form a federally recognized union.
The NLRB directed that election ballots be mailed to eligible voters later this month.
The ruling comes roughly four months after students filed to form a union with the power to negotiate wages and benefits on their behalf. Duke challenged the effort by arguing the students were not employees of the university.
“I find that Ph.D students who provide instructional services in undergraduate or graduate level courses or labs and who are compensated by and subject to the direction and control of Duke University are employees within the meaning” of the National Labor Relations Act, NLRB regional director Lisa Y. Henderson wrote in the ruling. “I further find that a unit comprised of such employees is appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining.”
Duke University had not provided a response to The News & Observer’s request for comment as of Monday evening.
The Duke Graduate Students Union (DGSU) celebrated the ruling Monday. Approximately 2,500 Ph.D. students will be eligible to vote on whether to form a union, with Henderson directing the election to take place by mail-in ballot.
“We’re ultimately excited to actually get votes counted,” Anita Simha, DGSU cochair, told The News & Observer. “It’s been a long time coming.”
How the vote will work
Ballots will be mailed on July 24 and counted on Aug. 22.
Holding a manual, in-person vote “during the summer when many students are away provides too little opportunity to vote,” Henderson wrote, while combining manual and mail-in voting would be “administratively difficult in making sure approximately 2,500 eligible voters only vote once.”
Simha noted the timing of the upcoming election poses some difficulties.
“The way grad student life is set up, a lot of us are away from Durham over the summer,” she said. “Making sure everyone has a chance to vote in this short window is the challenge right now.”
Doctoral students pursue their own research and don’t pay tuition, but they also serve as teaching and research assistants, with duties including instructing classes, grading papers and working in labs. This past academic year, Duke Ph.D. students earned a stipend of $34,660, which will rise this upcoming year to $38,600.
“Duke works because we do,” DGSU wrote to Duke University President Vincent Price in late February. At the time, DGSU said a “growing majority” of the school’s 2,500 doctoral students supported unionization. The organization asked the administration to voluntarily recognize the union.
It did not, and on March 3, DGSU and the Service Employees International Union petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union.
Student union efforts successful elsewhere
If the NLRB had ruled in Duke’s favor, it would have upended graduate student organizing efforts across the country and overturned NLRB precedent on the right of graduate students to organize.
In 2016, the NLRB affirmed graduate students at Columbia University, who worked as teaching and research assistants, could unionize to collectively bargain their pay and other benefits. Since then, student workforces at several private schools have approved federally recognized unions, including at Brown, Harvard, Georgetown, Yale, Boston University and the University of Southern California.
In a March 6 letter addressed to Duke Ph.D. students and faculty, interim Provost Jennifer Francis wrote, “Ph.D. students are not admitted to do a job; they are selected because of their potential to be exceptional scholars.”
Duke Ph.D. students voted down a union in a 2017 election, but pro-union advocates, citing the successful unionizing efforts of students across the country, say they’re confident this time would be different, The N&O previously reported.
This story was originally published July 10, 2023 at 7:54 PM.
