It's only a 40-minute ride from the University of Rhode Island in South Kingstown to Brown University in Providence.

But if you are a graduate student who is a teaching or research assistant -- and trying to form a labor union -- URI and Brown might as well be on separate coasts.

Consider the fortunes of Graduated Assistants United at URI:

* Last April, students voted, 190 to 20, to be represented by the American Association of University Professors, the union that represents the URI faculty.

* Not content to wait the months and perhaps years it takes to hash out any first contract, URI administrators readily agreed to an interim pact, immediately granting salary hikes, health coverage, and free parking.

Contrast that with the experience of the Brown Graduate Employees Organization:

* The December 2001, votes cast by Brown students about whether to be represented by the United Auto Workers were impounded before they could be counted, because the university appealed the unionization issue to the National Labor Relations Board.

* Students now are in a long-term legal waiting game with little information on when the NLRB may rule. In the meantime, Sheyda Jahanbani, one of the student organizers, says discussion-type classes are increasing to about 30 students, compared to more manageable 15-student sections.

Why the difference? One startling contrast is the role of the two presidents.

URI President Robert L. Carothers has taken a positive stance, telling the state Board of Governors of Higher Education that URI has no objections to the union.

In an interview last week, Carothers says there was widespread support on the campus, because improving working conditions might help URI recruit and retain top-level graduate instructors and researchers.

Also, Carothers says the university's experience with other unions, including the faculty union, has been positive. "People have a tendency to say that a labor contract is somehow foisted on you," he says. "But when you negotiate a contract between parties, the contract belongs to both parties and in many ways, it resolves things people may fight about."

At Brown, President Ruth J. Simmons's opposition stunned union backers who thought she would sympathize with their complaints about difficult working conditions, including low wages of about $14,000 annually. But, as previously reported (see "Illiberal education," News, December 13, 2001), Simmons has taken the lead in trying to keep the union out.

Frank R. Annunziato, executive director of URI's AAUP unit, says the vastly different reactions of Brown and URI are partly explained by differing legal situations. As a private institution, Brown is covered by the federal NLRB, which only recently ruled teaching assistants can be unionized. URI is governed by more liberal state laws.

From his vantage point at URI, Annunziato is as surprised as anyone at Simmons's position at Brown. "She's a marvelous person, and that's why this is something," he says. "She shouldn't be doing this. She should be walking with them [the students]."

But Mark M. Nickel, head of the Brown news bureau, says Simmons's and the university's stances are based on academic principle. Brown requires most of its grad students to teach as part of their training, he says, and thus a union would be negotiating academic requirements.

Issue Date: February 21 - 27, 2003