ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University officials announced today (June 20) that on June 14, Vice President for Human Resources Mary George Opperman received a subpoena duces tecum from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), issued at the request of the associate general counsel of the United Auto Workers in Detroit, demanding that the university produce by July 9 an enormous array of materials dealing not only with graduate and undergraduate students serving in teaching assistant, research assistant and related titles, but also dealing with all faculty of the university and all employees of the university "exclusive of TAs [teaching assistants], supervisors, managers and guards."

Opperman observed that, since the initial hearing before a regional hearing examiner of the NLRB held in Ithaca on May 29, the university has been actively engaged in attempting to determine which individuals have been included in the proposed bargaining unit in the petition filed May 13 by the Cornell Association of Student Employees CASE/UAW. The inclusion of undergraduate students in the proposed unit has substantially complicated the data-gathering activity, since the university has no centralized record-keeping of undergraduates serving in the job titles identified by the union: teaching assistant, research assistant, tutors, graders, readers and consultants.

"We are making every effort to comply with the hearing examiner's request that we identify all individuals in the proposed unit by July 9, the date of the next scheduled hearing, but that does not mean that it is easily possible to do so," Opperman said.

Specifically, the union has requested, among other documents:

• all handbooks, manuals and/or all other documents setting forth work rules and/or procedures and terms and conditions of employment for any employee or any faculty of Cornell;
• all other documents setting forth work rules and/or procedures, terms and conditions of employment and/or teaching conditions and requirements relating to teaching assistants, including those specific to departments or programs, as well as those applicable on a general basis;
• all documents setting forth the degree requirements for all graduate programs at Cornell;
• all documents describing all medical, disability, employee assistance and/or workers compensation plans applicable to and/or available to teaching assistants, employees and faculty;
• all documents describing or referring to fellowships and/or scholarships provided by or through Cornell to graduate and undergraduate students, including their sources and amounts, criteria and conditions, including any teaching-related requirements, the degree program, department and year of study of the recipients, and the number of such fellowships and scholarships granted to graduate students in each department, school and program in each academic year;
• all documents showing claims made by teaching assistants for workers' compensation benefits from Jan. 1, 1998, to date and for unemployment compensation, and the disposition of such claims;
• The University Bulletins and notices applicable to graduate students for the 2001-02 and 2002-03 academic years and the course announcement bulletins for these years;
• all documents, studies and/or reports prepared for or in the possession of Cornell, from 1995 to the present, that relate to the services performed by teaching assistants, including accreditation reports and reviews;
• all documents pertaining to the salaries or other compensation of teaching assistants, and all appointment documents describing their financial packages;
• all documents, reports and/or resolutions of faculty governance bodies, the board of trustees or other administrative units relating to the educational requirements, services and/or compensation of teaching assistants from 1995 to the present;
• individual data on all graduate and undergraduate students who served as teaching assistants, graduate assistants or in other instruction-related titles since 2000-2001 or since they first performed these activities, including the amount of funding they received and the source of that funding;
• all claims made by teaching assistants with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, the New York State Human Rights Commission or in federal or state courts, claiming that the university had violated provisions of the New York Human Rights Law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADEA, and/or the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the disposition of such claims from Jan. 1, 1998, to the present;
• all documents referring to categories of students receiving stipends from the university that are subject to income tax withholding and/or FICA, those not subject to such withholding, and other categories of payment to students reportable to tax authorities;
• documents referring to the reasons for termination or non-renewal of appointments for teaching assistants since Jan. 1, 1999, and the academic status of such assistants terminated or not renewed since Jan. 1, 2000;
• documents showing departmental and other budgets from which teaching assistants, graduate assistants and faculty receive compensation; and
• documents showing grievance procedures available for teaching assistants and faculty.

"This is an extraordinary request," said Opperman. "It demands detailed and individualized data over the course of several years. It calls for information concerning the faculty and Cornell's academic programs. It seeks academic status information on individual students, information that the university may be prohibited by law, under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, from providing to anyone without the student's consent. While Cornell will attempt to comply with all legitimate requests for information under the law, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be physically and administratively impossible to do so by July 9 and long thereafter. The subpoena served upon the university at the request of the union clearly demonstrates, better than any document that the university itself could prepare, the wisdom of waiting upon the outcome of the Columbia and Brown appeals before going forward into the detailed fact-finding demanded by the union," she noted.

"The cost in dollars and in human resources to both the university and the union of protracted fact-finding hearings, which may be necessary in view of the union's inclusion of undergraduate students in the proposed bargaining unit, will be substantial," said Opperman. "This situation will only be exacerbated if the union's subpoena requesting unprecedented information on faculty and staff, in addition to student assistants, is allowed to stand. Given the nature of the appeals that are pending before the NLRB in the Columbia and Brown University cases, the NLRB's rulings in these cases may well result in the avoidance of substantial unnecessary expenditures of time and energy, no matter which side prevails," she said. "The university will move to set aside the subpoena received on June 14."

Cornell officials also announced today that the university is seeking special permission from the NLRB to appeal the denial by the Buffalo regional director of its motion to postpone the scheduled hearings on the unionization of Cornell graduate and undergraduate students until the full NLRB renders its decisions in the appeals that have been filed in similar cases by Columbia and Brown universities.

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