(Photo by Andrew Pasko-Reader)

Graduate student employees at Georgetown University have petitioned the school’s president to voluntary recognize a union representing their interests as research and teaching assistants, joining a wave of similar efforts at private colleges in the wake of a landmark National Labor Relations Board decision last year.

“Forming a union is a way for us to have a collective voice, and for Georgetown to live up to its highest Jesuit values,” says Karen Rice, a fourth year in the university’s philosophy department.

The Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees has elected to be affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. There are 800 graduate students at Georgetown who teach classes, perform research, or serve as advisors and would therefore be included in the collective bargaining unit, according to AFT.

After a yearlong organizing effort, more than half have committed to joining a union, Rice says, and dozens personally trooped to President John DeGioia’s office Wednesday afternoon to deliver a letter seeking voluntary recognition.

The university is “carefully reviewing their request,” says spokesperson Rachel Pugh.

The NLRB ruled in 2016 that teaching and research assistants at Columbia University could be represented as employees (the board had previously flip-flopped on the issue twice in the past 17 years, mirroring the political party in executive office and making appointments; many expect that Donald Trump’s appointments will overturn this latest ruling).

“One of the things that’s become very clear over the years is that graduate students, when they’re acting as teaching assistants or research assistants, are doing work for the university, and that their work furthers the goals of the universities’ existence,” says Risa Lieberwitz, a professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University. “In many instances, the graduate employees find that their working conditions and pay and benefits are not adequate.”

There has been a surge of interest at private universities (graduate students at most public schools have long been able to organize under state collective bargaining laws) since the Columbia decision last summer, with students at more than a dozen schools moving to unionize with mixed success. Brandeis and American University have allowed efforts to form unions affiliated with Service Employees International Union to proceed, while Duke, Loyola University Chicago, and Boston College are among the schools that have registered their opposition.

Most recently, the University of Chicago fought hard to convince the NLRB that its students shouldn’t be considered workers under the standard of the Columbia case. After losing the case, students overwhelmingly voted to unionize in October.

The AFT and Georgetown students hope that they’ll have an easier path.

“Georgetown University has a proud history of treating its employees justly and upholding the values of inclusion, equity and labor rights,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten in a statement.

In the letter to DeGioia seeking voluntary recognition, GAGE cited the university’s commitment to cura personalis, or care of the entire person, and its Just Employment Policy, which specifically vows to “to respect the rights of employees to vote for or against union representation without intimidation, unjust pressure, undue delay or hindrance.”

“We have a lot of hope and just expectation that Georgetown is going to do the right thing,” Rice says.

GAGE’s priorities in moving to form a union are better healthcare, wages, and support for international students.

Meanwhile, they have already seen some success. Over the course of more than 1,000 one-on-one conversations, Rice says that graduate workers have broken down barriers between the school’s 33 departments. When students in the Spanish and Portuguese department learned that they were teaching double the number of classes as anyone else for the same or less pay, they successfully negotiated a change.

“The first element of organizing is to discuss issues with each other and share information,”says Lieberwitz. “One of the benefits is that people talk to each other outside of their particular areas and learn about the rest of the university.”