It appears as if some NYU graduate students are planning to strike, to protest the university's refusal to recognize their representation by the UAW. The issue is an unusually clear-cut illustration of the broad ambitions of the academic unionization movement: the university had previously offered to negotiate with the union on economic issues alone, but the union refused, creating the current impasse.

Anyhow, according to today's New York Sun, a group of NYU faculty has demanded a meeting with President James Sexton to discuss the issue. The faculty union activists, in theory, have the power to resolve this matter. They could, for instance, offer to transfer some of their salaries to the union's coffers. Or they could make a public statement that they don't want the university to stand up for academic freedom and announce that they will accept the union as a partner on curricular, personnel, and other academic matters. Or they could go out on strike themselves, and sacrifice their paychecks and perhaps even put their tenured positions on the line.

Instead, however, they're confining their offerings to symbolic expressions of sympathy, such as the plan of History professor Molly Nolan, who told the Sun that"she would move her undergraduate course on the history of women and gender in modern Europe to Fat Cat Billiards on Christopher Street."

Settle with the union or consign Prof. Nolan's class to a pool hall? There's a tough choice for Pres. Sexton.

Robert KC Johnson - 11/8/2005

I know--but the issue here was whether future negotiations between the union and NYU would be confined to economic questions (salary, benefits, health care, etc.), or whether the union also would insist on the right to bargain about academic matters. NYU said yes to the first (mistakenly, in my opinion) and no to the second; the union said it would accept no less than both provisions.

Given that response, I don't see that Sexton had any choice but to pursue the course he has.

Jonathan Rees - 11/8/2005

...union representation IS an economic issue.