Ruling opens path for UH grad students to unionize
A Hawaii Supreme Court ruling issued Wednesday has opened the way for a group of University of Hawaii graduate assistants to petition to be classified as public employees with collective bargaining rights.
Members of the UH graduate assistant organization Academic Labor United have argued that the salaried jobs performed by UH’s 1,500 graduate assistants have evolved well beyond that of entry-level “student help” and are critical to the university’s functioning, and that they should be considered public employees with the right to organize.
