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New Haven, Conn. • Graduate students from a half dozen departments at Yale University have voted to form unions.
Elections were administered Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board for graduate students in nine departments.
Organizers say students from the departments of English, geology and geophysics, history, history of art, math, and sociology voted in favor of unionization. Students in the physics department voted against it. Ballots were still to be counted for graduate assistants in the departments of East Asian languages and political science.
Local 33-UNITE HERE had the NLRB's approval to hold elections for individual departments, despite objections from the university.
The NLRB found last year that graduate assistants who assist in teaching and research at private universities are employees and have a right to union representation.