On Thursday night, Interim President Michael Kotlikoff and newly appointed Provost Kavita Bala emailed the campus community with a University statement accusing the Cornell Graduate Student Union-United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, or CGSU-UE, of bargaining for a provision that would harm graduate students.
President Kotlikoff and Provost Bala’s Statement was wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. As School of Industrial and Labor Relations faculty experts in labor law and labor relations, we feel it is our duty to explain why.
President Kotlikoff and Provost Bala wrongly stated that under the CGSU-UE’s union shop proposal, “students who decline to join the union could be dismissed from their appointments and prohibited from holding future appointments. These students would no longer have a viable path to a degree at Cornell. Under the proposed union shop agreement, there is no option for students to remain graduate assistants if they object to joining the union.”
Here’s why President Kotlikoff and Provost Bala’s statements were wrong on the facts and the law: The CGSU-UE has proposed a lawful “union shop” provision, which is a “union security” clause that provides that all employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement will become union members, but that only payment of union dues is a condition of employment. In other words, under the CGSU-UE proposed union shop provision, no graduate employee can be dismissed for refusing to become a...
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