Cornell Ph.D. Student’s Appeal to NLRB’s Top Prosecutor Urges Agency to End Union Control Over Graduate Students
Case attacks Obama-era federal ruling that exposed graduate students to union boss power and forced dues
Ithaca, NY (February 18, 2026) – Russell Burgett, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, is asking newly-seated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Crystal Carey to issue a complaint and ask the NLRB to free graduate students across the country from being forced to fund and associate with union bosses.
Burgett filed an Appeal to the General Counsel on February 10, with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys. In his filing, Burgett presses the General Counsel to have the NLRB reconsider the disastrous 2016 Columbia University decision, a controversial Obama-era ruling that classified graduate students as “employees” subject to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Under Columbia University, union bosses are permitted to gain one-size-fits-all exclusive “representation” powers over graduate students at private universities.
“A graduate student’s primary relationship with his or her school is as a customer of that school’s educational instruction and services, not as a statutory employee,” reads Burgett’s Appeal. “[U]niversities forcing graduate students to pay union dues to act as teaching and research assistants interferes with their ability to complete their course of studies and earn their degrees. Here, the [union contract] effectively makes financially supporting [the union] a condition of receiving a Cornell graduate degree.”
Burgett, who is not a member of the Cornell Graduate Student Union (CGSU-UE, an affiliate of United Electrical), opposes the radical ideology and agitation of CGSU agents on campus. Because New York, where Cornell is located, is not a Right to Work state, CGSU bosses can legally force students (mischaracterized as “employees”) to pay money to the union to complete their graduate programs.
Adding insult to injury, CGSU union officials rejected Burgett’s request to opt-out of paying the portion of dues that goes toward the union’s politics, which is a right guaranteed to workers under the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision. CGSU union bosses speciously claimed that Beck objections could only be submitted during a narrow, union-concocted “window period” of 30 days per year.
NLRB Must Reexamine Union Powers Over Students, Including Forced-Dues Mandates
Burgett’s Appeal asks the NLRB General Counsel to prosecute CGSU union officials and Cornell management on the grounds that the union contract is blocking the university from doing business with students who abstain from union membership or union financial support. Union agreements that require an entity to cease doing business with those who refuse union association blatantly violate the NLRA.
The Appeal’s argument hinges on the Board reaffirming that students have a “business and academic” relationship with their universities and are not “employees” was wrongly held in Columbia University.
In addition to his primary argument, Burgett’s Appeal contends that the NLRB should prosecute CGSU union officials for arbitrarily limiting when students can exercise their Beck right to opt out of funding union politics.
“It is unconscionable that current NLRB case law allows union officials, like those from CGSU-UE, to upend the academic careers of students who refuse to associate with them,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union bosses’ one-size-fits-all bargaining schemes have no place in the world of academia, where freedom of thought and association should be paramount.
“We’re proud to stand behind Mr. Burgett, and urge the Board to affirm the commonsense idea that graduate students are students and were never intended to be subjected to the NLRB’s forced unionism regime,” Mix added.
Cornell University Graduate Student Files Federal Charges Seeking End to Union Boss Control Over Graduate Students
Student case attacks Obama-era federal labor board ruling that exposed graduate students to union boss power
Ithaca, NY (July 14, 2025) – Russell Burgett, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical physics at Cornell University, has just launched a groundbreaking federal labor case challenging the Cornell Graduate Student Union’s (an affiliate of United Electrical) authority to maintain exclusive representation powers over him and his fellow graduate students.
Burgett, who opposes the union and is not a member, filed his charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing private sector labor law. Burgett’s case is a direct challenge to the Obama NLRB’s 2016 Columbia University ruling, which overturned longstanding precedent and permitted union bosses to gain monopoly bargaining powers over graduate students at private universities like MIT, Columbia, and Cornell.
While union monopoly bargaining schemes in academia were already controversial at the time of the Columbia University ruling, student opposition to the policy has spiked in recent years as union officials have pursued increasingly radical and divisive ideological activities on campuses.
Charges: NLRB Must Reexamine Union Powers Over Students, Including Forced-Dues Mandates
Burgett’s charges assert that Cornell graduate students are not “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act. For that reason, the charges say, CGSU-UE union officials’ attempts to force them to abide by a union contract – including provisions that effectively mandate the students pay union dues or fees to complete essential parts of their graduate programs – violate federal labor law.
Furthermore, Burgett’s charges contend the union contract is illegal because it forbids the university from doing business with students who abstain from union membership or union financial support. Union agreements that require an entity to cease doing business with persons who refuse to associate with the union are a clear violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“Mr. Burgett’s case is the latest chapter in a continuing saga showing why union bosses’ one-size-fits-all bargaining schemes have no place in academia,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “At America’s elite universities, union bosses empowered by the Obama and Biden NLRBs are coercing dissenting students into funding their political radicalism and constant agitation – including Jewish students who have sincere religious objections to the anti-Israel vitriol that campus unions push.
“Forcing students to choose between completing their graduate degrees or affiliating with an ideological group they find unconscionable is antithetical to principles of academic freedom, and Mr. Burgett’s case directly attacks the Obama NLRB’s and Biden NLRB’s flawed rulings allowing such coercion to happen in the first place,” Mix added.
Cornell Univ. Graduate Students Hit UE and GSU Unions with Discrimination Charges for Harassing Religious Objectors to Compulsory Unionism
EEOC Charges: Instead of respecting valid requests for religious accommodation, union officials sent harassing “questionnaires” to illegally interrogate students’ beliefs
Ithaca, NY (June 19, 2025) – Two Cornell University graduate students have just slammed the Cornell Graduate Student Union (GSU) and its parent the United Electrical (UE) union with federal antidiscrimination charges. The students, David Rubinstein and Louie Gold, maintain that union officials are illegally harassing graduate students who submit valid religious objections to paying union dues.
Rubinstein and Gold are both Jewish and believe affiliating with or financially supporting the UE unions conflicts with their sincerely held religious beliefs. The graduate students filed their charges at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with free legal representation by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
In their charges, Rubinstein and Gold explain that they are targets of an illegal practice in which UE union officials harass and interrogate religious objectors rather than comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination, including on the basis of religion.
As their charges explain, rather than comply with their valid requests for religious accommodations, UE union bosses instead sent “questionnaires” containing invasive and legally irrelevant questions to religious objectors. The questionnaires include intrusive demands like, “[P]lease include the name and address of the organization sponsoring the [religious] services you attend and the name of the faith leader(s),” and “How long have you had your religious belief?” The end of the questionnaire indicates that union officials may not even respect a student’s religious objection after completion of the form, stating ominously that “The UE national union will review your religious objection upon receipt and may have follow-up questions” (emphasis added).
Union Officials Ignored Students’ Valid Exercise of Religious Freedom
Rubinstein and Gold argue in their charges that they and other students who received this dubious questionnaire already discharged their legal duties when they informed the union of their objections to paying dues. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that objectors must only describe a sincere religious objection to union affiliation, which Rubinstein and Gold both did in letters to the national UE union. Federal law requires union officials to provide a religious accommodation to such objectors. An accommodation often permits the objector to divert an amount of money equal to dues to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity instead.
“Both nationwide and on the Cornell campus, the UE, CGSU, and their other campus affiliates have been at the forefront of demonizing Israel, seeking its destruction, and supporting Hamas’s violent and barbaric terrorism against Israel and its inhabitants,” the charges read. “The unions had no objective or bona-fide reasons to doubt the basis for my accommodation request or to question my sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, and practices.”
Because New York lacks Right to Work protections, UE and Cornell GSU union officials are enforcing a contract that requires graduate students to pay union dues or fees just to keep their work. While Title VII creates an exception for those like Gold and Rubinstein who have sincere religious objections to union affiliation, Right to Work states provide even more protection by making union membership and financial support a voluntary choice.
Jewish Graduate Students at MIT Forced GSU and UE to Back Off Illegal Dues Practices
Since 2023, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys have assisted dozens of Christian and Jewish graduate students across the country in defending their religious freedom from union forced-dues demands – particularly demands from UE union officials. In 2024, five Foundation-backed Jewish graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scored religious accommodations that allowed them to pay money to pro-Israel charities instead of to the UE union hierarchy. In a related case for another MIT graduate student, Foundation attorneys secured a settlement that required union officials to inform the entire MIT graduate student body (over 3,000) of their rights under the Communications Workers of America v. Beck Supreme Court decision. Beck permits nonmembers to cut off dues payments for union political or ideological activities.
“This situation at Cornell again shows students and the public at large exactly what GSU and UE union officials’ priorities are: radical political mobilization and agitation, not respecting the individual rights of the students they claim to ‘represent,’” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union bosses may not like it, but federal law is clear that they must comply with valid requests for a religious accommodation based on sincerely held objections to union affiliation, and cannot harass and interrogate those who object to the union’s activities on religious grounds.
“While the battle to preserve the right of religious students and workers to opt out of objectionable union support is certainly important, true reform is needed to ensure that no one is forced to associate with union bosses or their agendas, whether their objection to the union is political, religious, financial, or otherwise,” added Mix.
