A University of Massachusetts Amherst spokesman said a recent National Labor Relations Board decision may have arisen from early organizing on the UMass campus.
The board ruled Tuesday that graduate students working as teaching and research assistants at colleges and universities are covered under federal labor laws.
Since graduate students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst — the largest school in the area with diversified graduate-level offerings — have been unionized since 1992, the ruling has only subtle effects on the graduate student body within Hampshire County.
“We were one of the first public universities where graduate students unionized, and I think that may well have inspired students on other campuses to pursue similar agreements,” said Daniel Fitzgibbons, a spokesman for UMass. “We were part of an early wave of unionization.”
Spokespeople at Amherst, Hampshire and Mount Holyoke colleges said that since they are undergraduate institutions, the ruling does not affect them.
Stacey Schmeidel, spokeswoman for Smith College, said she is unsure about how the ruling would impact graduate students at that school.
“It’s too soon to know how or whether this week’s ruling will affect Smith,” she said. “The number of Smith graduate students who teach at the college is lower than at many comparable schools — this year, it’s between 30 and 40.”
Santiago Vidalez, co-chairman of the Graduate Employee Organization at UMass, said the ruling is fabulous news.
“We’re very excited,” he said. “This is absolutely wonderful news for our sister unions, and the unionizing push at private universities.”
Because of the high concentration of colleges and universities in the Northeast, Santiago said, the ruling makes room for the Graduate Employee Organization to build relationships with other unions in the region.
“It puts us in a good position to have that regional solidarity,” he said. “We always learn a lot when we talk to other organizers.”
Since the labor movement has been “taking a beating,” he said, it also validates the work the organization and other unions are doing, and bolsters them as they prepare for their next round of collective bargaining in spring 2017.
“It definitely gives us momentum and power,” he said. “And sets the pattern for the next year.”