WASHINGTON, DC Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative George Miller today introduced legislation to amend the National Labor Relations Act to grant collective bargaining rights to teaching and research assistants at private universities and colleges. A NLRB decision in 2004 took away those rights.

Senator Kennedy said, "Teaching and research assistants are in classrooms every day, educating students in colleges and universities across the country. This bill restores the bargaining rights unfairly denied by the NLRB to these hard-working graduate students."

(As Prepared for Delivery)

Mr. President, it's important for Congress to do more to guarantee
graduate students the right to organize and to bargain over their
wages and working conditions as teaching and research assistants, so
I'm introducing legislation today to do so.

More than ever in modern education, teaching and research assistants
are in classrooms every day, educating students in colleges and
universities across the country. Their numbers are increasing as the
number of full time faculty dwindles. Often, teaching and research
assistants are now doing the same job as junior faculty members.

In fact, the classroom is a workplace for these scholars. It's where
they earn the money they need to pay to put food on their tables and a
roof over their heads. They deserve the right to stand together and
make their voice heard in their workplace. Like other employees, they
should have the right to join a union and improve their working
conditions. Obviously, better wages and working conditions for them
also means better education for their students.

In 2004, however, a decision by the National Labor Relations Board
changed the law and denied fundamental workplace rights and
protections for teaching and research assistants. This ruling stopped
an active organizing movement in its tracks and deprived thousands of
teaching and research assistants of their right to organize and
bargain over their wages and working conditions.

It's hardly the only bad decision by the National Labor Relations
Board under the Bush Administration, which has been the most
anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union NLRB in history. The Board has
let workers down at every turn. It has blocked efforts to gain union

representation, undermined workers' attempts to improve their pay and
benefits, and exposed them to penalties for seeking to improve their
working conditions.

The National Labor Relations Board is supposed to protect the rights
of American workers, but it is failing teaching and research
assistants, just as it has failed so many others. By passing the
Teaching and Research Assistants Collective Bargaining Rights Act,
Congress will give these workers back the rights that the National
Labor Relations Board has taken away. This legislation amends the
definition of employee under the National Labor Relations Act to
explicitly include teaching and research assistants at private
universities and colleges and restores the law to where it was before
the Bush Board's anti-worker decision.

This bill is a significant step forward in restoring workers' rights,
and I urge my colleagues to join in supporting this important
legislation.

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