CHICAGO — A federal appeals panel says University of Chicago student employees are allowed to collectively bargain.
On Dec. 17, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals came down on the side of the National Labor Relations Board, which had backed a petition from a labor union seeking to represent students working part-time jobs in the University of Chicago library.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union Local 743 had filed the petition with the NLRB in May 2017. In response, the university said the students don’t qualify for collective bargaining, in part because they are only temporary employees whose interest in the job terms and conditions are insufficient for union representation.
Before a hearing on that dispute, the NLRB rejected the university’s intended evidence, saying it didn’t do enough to sustain the board’s position, prompting a petition to the appeals panel. Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Kanne wrote the appellate opinion, issued Dec. 17; Circuit Judges David Hamilton and Amy Barrett concurred.
“The university stated that the tenure of part-time student employees is ‘inherently temporary’ — because ‘student employment ends when students graduate or leave the University for other reasons,’ ” Kanne wrote. “The University also described evidence showing that most students remained in their positions for less than one year and could hold those positions only as students.”
The NLRB rejected that evidence at a hearing May 2017, saying it all dealt with established law. Later, an NLRB regional director endorsed the hearing officer’s decision and ordered an election to determine a representative for the group. The board also denied the university’s request to stay that election. After Local 743 was elected, the university objected on grounds it was denied its hearing on whether the students had bargaining rights. The university also refused to bargain with the union, prompting an unfair labor practices complaint.
According to Kanne, for several decades the NLRB “has been consistently inconsistent” concerning classification of student employees, ultimately overruling its own past decisions in a 2016 case involving Columbia University students in which it established “finite tenure alone cannot be a basis on which to deny bargaining rights,” according to the panel.
The university didn’t ask the appeals panel to re-examine the Columbia issue, but said the NLRB abused discretion by misapplying its own evidence rule. The university said that also violated its due process rights.
The panel said the only evidence the university tried to introduce focused on student employee tenures — the precise clause at the heart of the Columbia precedent.
“The board was not obliged to receive evidence to support a position that is unsustainable under prevailing board law,” Kanne wrote. “We think the Board acted well within its discretion.”
According to the panel, the university also raised an issue, for the first time on appeal, concerning part-time employees who aren’t students. Kanne said that “attempt to repackage its arguments … is unpersuasive and utterly unsupported by its statement of position and offer of proof.”
Kanne also said the university’s due process arguments failed on similar grounds. While the university insisted it was entitled to introduce evidence at the hearing before the students elected Local 743 as their representative, the panel determined the school can’t maintain “it raised ‘substantial material and factual issues’ about the ability of its student library employees to collectively bargain. That’s because the issues the university raised are immaterial under prevailing board law, and the university’s position depends on the reasoning of overruled board decisions.”
The panel denied the university’s petition for review and granted the NLRB’s cross-application to enforce its decision and order.
The University of Chicago has been represented in the action by attorneys Jacob M. Rubinstein and Jenny R. Goltz, of the firm of Cozen O'Connor, of Chicago.