As a grad student at Yale (where there is also a push for unionization amongst the grad students), I just want to point out the significance of unionization at schools like Columbia and Yale....

These are PRIVATE schools.  IVY league.   Many public universities have unions, but the corporations in charge of the IVY league schools have fought TOOTH AND NAIL against any unionization at their campuses.

This being said, I will be the first to admit that our "reps" here in GESO are often not on the same page as the graduate student population... and thus, there is A LOT of hostility between union organizers and non-union member grad students.  Some of the hostility is reasonable, some is not.

Regardless, part of the reason why the drive at Yale has failed is that GESO has not given the grad student population many reasons to love them.  I respect the fight, but the fight needs to be for the people... not for the sake of the fight or for the sake of some high, pie in the sky concept.  If you want to be a grad student union, then represent AND LISTEN to those you want to represent.

in summary:

Bush admin is wrong...

the NLRB is wrong...

and too often the union leaders are also wrong.

This, after more than 3 years of living on a campus with a very LIVELY union drive.

-Zen Blade

I respect their willingness to stand up for what they think is right. I have a friend who was a graduate student at Tulane University. He only found out after having his jaw broken when he came to the aid of a domestic voilence victim that his Grad Student "insurance" purchased through the school was pretty much useless.

He ended up at New Orleans famed Charity Hospital to have his jaw wired shut because his "Grad Student version of health insurance" made seeking care next door at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic unaffordable. Of course I understand that most cities don't even have a charity hospital so that puts students at other universities in an even more precarious position.

In short these students are working for very low pay and on top of it their health coverage is non-existant. It is almost criminal that the universities can get away with this while at the same time demanding above inflation tuition increases to the tune of 7% a year.

I say more power to them for organizing. I doubt they are asking for anthing more than fair wages, benefits and decent working conditions as all workers the world over should.

As another former undergrad at Yale, I take issue with my fellow Yalies' points-of-view.

First of all, teaching assistants are extremely vital and increasingly exploited workers in the high-pressure, big-money industry that higher education has become. The trend toward a part-time, "casual" workforce (as opposed to permanent employees with job security), as exemplified by companies like Wal-Mart, doesn't stop at the gates of the academy. There are fewer and fewer full-time, tenure-track professors, and more and more work is done by (much cheaper) adjuncts and teaching assistants. As in public K-12 schools, class sizes are getting bigger and bigger. This is bad for the students, and it's bad for the teachers.

The only remedy for this situation is a movement of graduate-student teaching assistants (the workers) to put pressure on the university administration (the boss). In other words, a union. As in any workplace, the union does not create the adversarial relationship. The boss/worker relationship already exists, however mixed it may be with the advisor/advisee relationship. The union merely takes this relationship and makes it less one-sided.

So, why do undergrads support GESO? Of course, not all of them do. But when I was there, many of us did, for the simple reason that the teachers' working conditions are undergrads' learning conditions. Smaller class sizes and more full-time profs are good for everyone.

Not only that, but GESO organizers helped us immensely in our struggle for financial aid reform. Alas, I have loans to pay off, but that's because I graduated before the Undergraduate Organizing Committee (UOC), whose organizers were trained by GESO and the other campus unions, succeeded in pressuring the administration to drastically decrease loans for low income students, in favor of outright grants. 

So you see, the graduate student union at Yale is part of an overall movement for economic justice in New Haven (one of the poorest cities in the country), along with UOC, Locals 34 and 35 of UNITE-HERE (Yale service, maintenance, clerical, and technical workers), and SEIU District 1199 (hospital workers).
 
(As a footnote, I'd also like to point out that it's appropriate this discussion is focusing on Yale TA's. While NYU TAs led the way as far as actually getting a union contract at a private university, GESO at Yale has led the way in terms of organizing and action, and they've inspired many of the TA organizing drives at other Ivy League schools. They've been organizing for 15 years, and they've gone on strike twice in the last few years, also without protection from the NLRB. And before the precedent was overturned, in 1996, their very first strike was ruled illegal by the NLRB because it was considered a "partial strike.")