By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Graduate students at New York University were joined by officials from the United Auto Workers and members of the New York City Council on Monday to once again petition for recognition as a labor union, the New York Times reported.
The Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC), which identified itself as "the union for teaching, research and graduate assistants at New York University" on its website, became the first graduate student union to be recognized by a private university in 2002, when it signed a 4-year contract with NYU administrators, the paper said.
However, the school stopped negotiating with the GSOC after a 2004 decision by the National Labor Relations Board declared that graduate teaching assistants and research assistants did not have the right to unionize because they are primarily students, not employees, according to the Times.
Now, GSOC organizers are once again petitioning for recognition from the school, chastising the NYU administration on its website for "capitalizing on a partisan right-wing National Labor Relations Board decision interpreting federal law."
While a statement on the GSOC website insists that "There is no legal obstacle to the NYU administration sitting down and negotiating with our union," the school is standing by the 2004 decision.
“The university has always believed that graduate students are students, not workers — they are admitted as students, not hired as workers,” argued John Beckman, NYU's Vice President for Public Affairs, according to the Times.
Over 1,000 of the school's 1,600 graduate students signed cards indicating their desire to form a union, according to members of the 70 person gathering outside NYU's Bobst Library on Monday, the Times said.
