NLRB: Indentured servitude legal

There are two basic types of grad students: those who are aiming for a Ph.D, and everyone else, including `terminal master's' students (people who are only going for a master's degree), and `professional degree' students (future doctors, lawyers, and subscribers to the WSJ). I can't speak for the everyone else, but the life of a future Ph.D revolves almost exclusively around school -- just keeping up with your classes is a full-time job. Consequently, we have to support ourselves in one of two basic ways: being paid to teach, and being paid to do research.

Doing research is, of course, the preferred way to go, because you have to do it anyway, might as well get paid for it. Thus research money is more prestigious, and usually only given to students who've been around a few years. The rest of us could, in theory, get a regular job -- I'm only spending eight of my sixteen waking hours a day doing homework and writing, a full-time job fits in there no problem! But since I'm selfish and enjoy my (relative) sanity, I have to teach for my department.

Teaching (by which I mean either lecturing for a course or assisting the lecturer) is actually a decent gig. For a glamorous $16k a year (before taxes) and the option to buy lousy health insurance, I work six hours a week during the summer, ten hours a week during the school year, and get 2 1/2 months of vacation. The problem is that, if I am not represented by a union, my pay and benefits are basically whatever the university decides to give me. For a single twenty-four-year-old who doesn't own a car and is still on his dad's health insurance, this isn't really a problem. My pay+benefits package is designed for someone at my point in life. It's somewhat different for, say, a twenty-seven-year-old man supporting his wife and newborn child. Or, to pick another example from people I actually know, a woman in her mid-forties with a teenage daughter.

So what did the National Labor Relations Board decide today? Well, if you happen to a grad student at a private university, you just have to live with your poverty, because the school has no obligation to recognize your union whatsoever. Their reasoning is that your relationship with the school is 100% student/institute of higher learning, and not in the NLRB's purview. The fact that you are paid (a pittance) for performing a (critical) service for said institution that has nothing at all to do with your education doesn't make you an employee. You're just a student with the privilege of being financial dependent on your school.