It is nothing like Thursday’s night presidential debate, but things got a bit “testy” at a recent hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services and Education. The Subcommittee heard testimony from two Board members about a recent decision in which the Board found that graduate students at private universities do not have the right to bargain collectively (Brown University, 342 NLRB No. 42). In response to a question by Senator Alan Specter (R-PA) asking how much weight the Board gave to its relatively recent decision in New York University (332 NLRB 1202), Labor Relations Week reports Chairman Robert Battista as saying, “I gave little weight to it frankly, because it was a decision of rather short duration that I think, personally, was erroneous.” (LRW Sept. 30, 2004).
