As classes begin at New York University this week, graduate assistants will return to teaching positions and await a union decision on whether to restart their discontinued strike.
It will mark the first time that many of the GAs have carried out instructional duties since November 2005, when the Graduate Student Organizing Committee initiated a six-month walkout protesting NYU's refusal to renegotiate their expired contract.
Though GSOC suspended its strike in May for NYU's summer recess, the committee has yet to resolve whether it will conduct a second work stoppage, citing its need to communicate with an influx of new graduate students.
"Our membership will ... not begin the academic year on strike, as the decision to embark on such action must be reached collectively," a GSOC statement released on Thursday read.
The recess stands in contrast to previous statements by union members that they would remain on strike indefinitely.
GSOC spokeswoman Susan Valentine defended the decision, noting that union members were returning to their posts by default, as a second walkout would require the consent of its full membership-much of which was not at NYU for the 2005 authorization vote.
"It's a democratic organization, and so to set out some target or goals wouldn't really be right in the absence of talking to everybody in the unit," Valentine said.
Throughout the dispute, NYU's administration has staunchly opposed graduate unionization, arguing that GAs are students, not employees. The National Labor Relations Board granted GSOC students the right to unionize in 2000, a decision overturned by a a reconstituted NLRB. When GSOC's contract ran out last year, NYU declined to sign a new one.
In November 2005, the administration said it would deny stipends and teaching appointments to GAs who walk out, a pledge that it carried out against several graduate students in February. Valentine said that two master's candidates seeking teaching appointments for fall 2006 had also been denied them, but that the union would push to have them reinstated.
NYU has made several overtures to disaffected graduate students since the strike began, including a rights-and-responsibilities compact and a $1000 per-annum stipend increase, bringing the average stipend to $20,000 for 2006-2007. Members cite a deteriorating health plan and the lack of an independent arbiter as reasons to continue seeking a union.
"The tactics that they [NYU] have used ... have definitely been based on the idea that if they say 'there's nothing to see here' for long enough, that it will somehow magically be true," Valentine said.