By a 1,351 to 580 margin, graduate student employees at Cornell University voted last week not to become the second private university in the country with unionized graduate assistants (see WIT for Oct. 23, 2002). Student union activists attributed the defeat in part to an effective campaign run by student anti-union group At What Cost?, that they did not have time to effectively respond to. Although under national labor law it will be a year before Cornell grads can again vote on unionization, the election brought major attention to the terms and conditions of student employment on campus and generated intense discussion about the merits of union representation among approximately 2000 future members of the regular U.S. workforce.
See "Graduate Assistants at Cornell Vote Decisively Against Autoworkers Union", STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times, October 27, 2002