MADISON, Wis. — International students won’t be allowed to join a union for research assistants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under a new policy that labor activists believe is the first of its kind in the U.S.
University officials insist the policy was meant to protect international students. They say the students’ visas, which limit them to 20 hours of work per week, might be jeopardized, although union leaders say such problems haven’t arisen at other universities.
The policy is part of a law signed by Gov. Jim Doyle last year granting UW-Madison research assistants the right to form a union starting in July.
Such a distinction between U.S. and international students is believed to be a first nationwide, according to representatives of labor unions and the university. The policy will exclude roughly 700 out of the 2,500 research assistants from unionizing at UW-Madison, long a national research powerhouse.
Research assistants are graduate students who work under faculty mentors, often for 40 hours or more per week. They currently aren’t considered employees at UW-Madison, so the 20-hour limit hasn’t been a problem.
But those who are U.S. citizens will become employees when the law giving them collective bargaining rights goes into effect, said university human resources official Stephen Lund.
Relatively few universities have unions representing graduate student researchers. Those that do, such as the University of Washington, the University of Oregon and the University of Iowa, include foreign students in the units.
