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.
Columbia GRADS (Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression) Hit UAW Union With Federal Labor Board Charges
Graduate student group argues union bosses are illegally using bad faith bargaining to demand political concessions from Columbia administration
New York, NY (September 22, 2025) – The Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression (GRADS), a group of graduate students at Columbia University, has just filed federal charges against officials of the Student Workers of Columbia, a union on campus affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW). GRADS filed its charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal representation from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
The members of GRADS, who have requested anonymity due to widespread harassment stemming from union agitation on campus, are charging the union with abusing its monopoly bargaining powers. They contend that union officials are bargaining in bad faith to extract concessions from the university on a number of radical policy proposals, instead of focusing on improving graduate students’ academic and research environment.
The NLRB’s controversial 2016 decision in Columbia University categorized graduate students at private universities as “employees” subject to federal labor law. In doing so, the Obama NLRB granted union bosses the ability to launch campus unionization campaigns and gain monopoly bargaining power over graduate students. Under monopoly bargaining, every employee in a work unit must accept the workplace “representation” of union bosses, even if they voted against the union or disagree with its agenda.
While federal law conditions union bosses’ monopoly bargaining powers on a nebulous “duty of fair representation,” union officials often ignore this duty and discriminate against those who oppose the union’s control.
Charges: UAW Union Demands University Take Action Against Israel, Crack Down on Police
GRADS’ charges list a number of outrageous bargaining items from UAW union officials, including: “proposals to force Columbia to limit campus police, security, and NYPD from doing their jobs;” “bargain[ing] over…so-called ‘Boycott, Divest & Sanction’ policies…of the entire university;” “termination of a dual-degree program between Columbia and Tel Aviv University;” and undoing discipline for students who have been suspended for “destroy[ing] campus property and disrupt[ing] the unit’s working conditions for extended periods.”
“These and similar actions constitute bad faith bargaining…and violate the duty of fair representation that respondent union owes to all represented graduate students,” the charges state.
Foundation attorneys are defending a number of other graduate students who seek to resist the radical – and often discriminatory – ways that union officials are wielding their monopoly bargaining powers on campus. Foundation attorneys are currently representing Jewish students at Cornell University in challenging the CGSU-UE union’s failure to respect their rights as religious objectors to union affiliation. Another Cornell student is pursuing a Foundation-backed case attacking union officials’ bargaining powers granted in the questionable 2016 Columbia University ruling.
“Far from facilitating a more harmonious relationship between graduate students and the Columbia administration, UAW union bosses are simply ramping up radical extremism at a university that has already seen more than its share of chaos,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “While it’s wrong from the start that any student is forced to accept union boss ‘representation’ they oppose, it’s even less acceptable that UAW union officials are trying to use their monopoly bargaining privileges to enforce their divisive politics on the entire campus, including undergraduate students.”
