The National Labor Relations Board this week looked to the Restatement of the Law, Employment Law, in deciding whether students who perform services at a university in connection with their studies are considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act.
In 2004, the Board held that graduate student assistants did not fall within the statutory meaning of employee. Brown University, 342 NLRB 483 (2004). In a 3-1 decision this week, the Board overruled Brown University, holding that “student assistants who perform work at the direction of their university for which they are compensated are statutory employees.”
The majority rejected the Brown University conclusion that the Act was intended to cover only those employment relationships that are primarily economic in nature. It also characterized as “unsupported” the Brown University rationale that collective bargaining between a university and its graduate students was inconsistent with the Act’s purpose and would intrude on the educational process.
In citing the Restatement, the NLRB focused on the distinction between employees and volunteers:
See Restatement of Employment Law §1.02 (“An individual is a volunteer and not an employee if the individual renders uncoerced services to a principal without being offered a material inducement”). As the Restatement explains, “[w]here an educational institution compensates student assistants for performing services that benefit the institution, . . . such compensation encourages the students to do the work for more than educational benefits and thereby establishes an employment as well as an educational relationship.”
The Board also cited to Employment Law Restatement Associate Reporter Michael Harper’s 2009 article criticizing the reasoning in Brown University.
Finding no compelling reason to exclude student assistants from the Act’s provisions, the Board held that the student assistants in this case have a common law employment relationship with Columbia University and so were entitled to protection under the Act.
Read the August 23, 2016 decision.