Cornell University Graduate Student Files Federal Charges Seeking End to Union Boss Control Over Graduate Students

Russell Burgett, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical physics at Cornell University, has just launched a groundbreaking federal labor case challenging the Cornell Graduate Student Union’s (an affiliate of United Electrical) authority to maintain exclusive representation powers over him and his fellow graduate students.

Burgett, who opposes the union and is not a member, filed his charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys. […]

“Mr. Burgett’s case is the latest chapter in a continuing saga showing why union bosses’ one-size-fits-all bargaining schemes have no place in academia,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “At America’s elite universities, union bosses empowered by the Obama and Biden NLRBs are coercing dissenting students into funding their political radicalism and constant agitation – including Jewish students who have sincere religious objections to the anti-Israel vitriol that campus unions push.

“Forcing students to choose between completing their graduate degrees or affiliating with an ideological group they find unconscionable is antithetical to principles of academic freedom, and Mr. Burgett’s case directly attacks the Obama NLRB’s and Biden NLRB’s flawed rulings allowing such coercion to happen in the first place,” Mix added.

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