Catherwood LibraryILR School

In a letter to Georgetown’s president John DeGioia, graduate students have asked the university to voluntarily recognize them as an official labor union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. The student organizers said that they have majority support for unionization, and cited Georgetown’s “just employment policy” that says workers have the right to free association and that the university will respect the right of it’s workers to vote for or against a union without intimidation or undue delay. Private universities across the country have challenged graduate student associations since the NLRB’s 2016 decision to include graduate students under the definition of a worker.