Will Grad Students Lose the Right to Unionize Under Trump?

Trevor Hull wakes up every morning and goes to a lab where he mixes chemicals together, using materials like lead and cadmium to synthesize other substances. A man who he calls his boss sometimes gives him directions and orders, and he’s paid on a bi-weekly basis. He says he feels like he works at a small business. “In my day to day life, it feels like a job,” he told me.

Hull’s lab, though, is at Columbia University—he’s a PhD student there—and whether or not he is a worker is a matter currently being debated at places like Columbia and across the country. Being a graduate student, some universities say, means doing research with professors, teaching courses, and fulfilling other obligations that may seem a lot like work, but are actually academic responsibilities meant to train students to be professors. That means that Hull and other graduate students at private universities should not be defined as employees under the National Labor Relations Act, the universities argue, and thus should not be allowed to join unions that collectively bargain on their behalf. For their part, Hull and other graduate