In an amicus brief filed with the National Labor Relations Board concerning the Columbia University graduate student unionization case, the other seven universities in the Ivy League recommended that the board maintain precedent, under which graduate students may not unionize.
The board has indicated that it may reconsider a 2004 decision which found that graduate students at Brown University were not employees under the National Labor Relations Act.
“Amici submit that there are no facts or changed circumstances that justify revisiting or modifying Brown,” those universities’ general counsels, plus those of Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in the Monday brief.