Administrators at The New School denied a counterproposal from the New Student Workers Union (NewSWU) yet again.

The counterproposal advocated for all residential education student leadership positions to be recognized as a single unit by the university and be permitted to vote on unionization. It sought to include graduate resident assistants (GRAs), community assistants (CAs), and resident assistants (RAs) in a proposed Residential Life Unit, which would give all three roles the chance to unionize rather than only RAs, who were granted permission to vote to unionize by the university as of spring 2025. 

NewSWU, the organizing group advocating for the unionization of all non-academic student workers, met with New School Deputy General Counsel Todd Drantch and Vice President and Chief Labor Relations Officer Keila Tennent on March 30 to negotiate the counterproposal that NewSWU organizers sent to admin on Feb. 4. 

NewSWU’s counterproposal argued that GRAs and CAs perform duties similar to RAs — such as assisting students in the dorms and managing the operation of residence halls  — and therefore should also be eligible for unionization. 

RAs, GRAs, and CAs often do the same kind of work, having to spend time in the dorm building dealing directly with student issues and needs. RAs and GRAs are on call in the event of an emergency. 

“Admin [is] just incredibly disrespectful, dehumanizing,” grad student and RA at Kerrey Hall Drew Spiller said, in reference to the university’s denial of the counterproposal. “They don’t do their job. They do not care for our arguments. They don’t care to learn about what we actually do.” 

The counterproposal is part of a multi-year effort by NewSWU to form a “wall-to-wall” student worker union by receiving formal recognition from the university. NewSWU would subsequently become its own separate entity outside of SENS-UAW, the academic student worker union. NewSWU would have the same contract terms as SENS-UAW. 

Residential education student workers are taking a slightly different approach. While NewSWU is assisting in their efforts, they are not looking to include RAs, GRAs, or CAs in NewSWU’s union group or in SENS-UAW. Rather, these student workers are seeking recognition as their own, independent union.

The university cited an insufficient “community of interest” —  overlap of work between GRAs, CAs, and RAs — as the main reason for rejecting NewSWU’s counterproposal, according to NewSWU representative Jovanna Liuzzo. 

Spiller said that TNS administration views GRAs and CAs as separate roles from RAs, referring to them as supervisors or office workers despite the overlap of responsibilities for each position. According to the university’s website, all three roles fall under the same title of residential education.

TNS admin’s view of GRAs and CAs as administrators mirrors a 1980 Supreme Court case, National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, where Yeshiva University’s administration argued that full-time faculty are in a supervisory role with managerial authority. When full-time faculty tried applying for union bargaining rights, Yeshiva University administrators said they did not qualify as employees under the National Labor Relations Act. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the university, setting back faculty unionization at private colleges and universities.

The act of offering a union election to only one group of workers while excluding another is a common divide-and-conquer union busting tactic.

University communications did not provide answers when The New School Free Press inquired about the denied counterproposal, even after repeated follow-ups.

Liuzzo explained that TNS administrators have been inconsistent with their reasoning for denying all three roles to be part of a single unit, going back and forth on whether there’s evidence of RAs, GRAs, and CAs having overlapping responsibilities. 

“It’s hard to tell if they are just simply not doing their homework, if they’re playing and pretending like they don’t know the rules,” Liuzzo said, “or if they’re getting misinformation because of how much staff has been hired, fired, [and] cycled through.” 

Spiller agrees.

“They don’t know anything about how these jobs actually work,” Spiller said. 

A years-long dispute

The back-and-forth between NewSWU and TNS administration reflects a complex and ongoing history. 

The original offer from the university permitting RAs to hold a vote to unionize directly followed protest demonstrations from the New School community in spring 2025. RAs, GRAs, CAs, and TNS staff and student workers walked out during Admitted Students Day in March last year, advocating for residential education workers’ and other non-academic student workers’  right to unionize. Additionally, 66.7% of residential education student workers signed a strike pledge, according to a NewSWU Instagram post.  

Immediately following the walkout, administrators raised RA stipends by $1,000 and offered them the ability to vote to unionize, Liuzzo explained — but they only gave this offer to RAs, not GRAs or CAs. The initial offer was vague and was never communicated in writing, according to Liuzzo.

“We’ve gotten no legal documents … no proposals,” Liuzzo said, in reference to the March 2025 offer. “We were verbally at the table, saying, ‘Hey, we have so much evidence and information to show you that the community of interest is much wider … it needs to be all ResLife.’”  

ResLife, or Residential/Residence Life, refers to all student workers under residential education. The title was created by student workers and NewSWU to encompass all student positions that have to do with the dorms. This includes GRAs, RAs, CAs, and any other student workers in the residence halls. ResLife used to also include mail room workers (who were not a part of residential education), though that position is no longer filled by students, Spiller explained.

TNS sent their initial proposal allowing only RAs to unionize in May 2025, which set off a nearly year-long exchange of counteroffers between them and NewSWU, according to Liuzzo. This all led up to NewSWU’s most recent meeting with administrators on March 4. 

Liuzzo said that the administration will verbally agree to something only to later exclude it from their official proposal. “It’s been the same cycle for almost four years. So they will verbally agree to things and then it won’t show up in the final offer,” Liuzzo said. 

On both Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts’ Admitted Students Days this semester, on April 12 and April 19 respectively, following the university’s denial of the counterproposal, NewSWU members handed out pins to parents and incoming students that said things like “Admitted Students for NewSWU” and “I support ResLife,” Spiller said.

In response, according to Liuzzo, TNS offered RAs $100 in NewCard Cash to work on Admitted Students Day. 

New developments

On May Day, May 1, NewSWU Organizing Committee and NewSWU ResLife Organizing Committee delivered a petition to university administrators requesting a union election agreement for all ResLife workers.

The petition was directly written to University President Joel Towers, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Richard Kessler, Senior Associate Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Shondrika Merritt, and five other TNS administrators. It was presented in person to Merritt. 

When presented, 60 students had signed so far.

“We ask you to join us, to sign this agreement that acknowledges your desire for a ResLife Union, a unit comprising RAs, GRAs, and CAs. An agreement that supports your desire to improve your conditions so that you may truly begin to thrive,” the petition said. “And finally, an agreement that recognizes your desire to be seen as human beings.” 

NewSWU’s most recent counterproposal, in addition to asking again for GAs and CRAs to join the RAs unit, also asked TNS for a private voluntary recognition agreement. This is a process where TNS would formally recognize NewSWU without an official ballot. It would occur through a private election run by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) instead of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

The counterproposal was similar to NewSWU’s first proposal in 2023 requesting university recognition. 

That year, NewSWU filed a NLRB petition for a union election. NewSWU also called for an accretion election: the process of adding new or unrepresented employees to an existing unit without having to go through the process of a formal election.

 However, in March 2025, NewSWU withdrew its petition for union election consideration.

The withdrawal followed increasingly hostile acts against unions since the Trump Administration took office. NewSWU and other college student union organizers fear that the NLRB will roll back legal protections for student workers, including enacting changes to bargaining rights and rescinding NLRB precedent that recognizes undergraduate workers as students first, rather than employees.

The withdrawal also marked a significant turning point for NewSWU, making it completely dependent on TNS’s private recognition.

TNS could privately recognize NewSWU at any time, whether NewSWU files a petition or not, according to Liuzzo. NewSWU could only be stopped from being an official union if the NLRB denied its petition, which NewSWU has withdrawn. 

“There was nothing that barred the university from recognizing us at any point in this process,” Liuzzo said. 

Liuzzo went on to explain that NewSWU’s withdrawal of its petition from the NLRB did not signify its desire not to become a union. However, the university thinks otherwise. 

“[NewSWU] withdrawing at the National Labor Relations Board level has signaled to the university that we no longer want a union.” Liuzzo said. 

What’s next for NewSWU?

NewSWU has until June 30 to decide whether to accept the university’s most recent offer for an RA-only unit. 

“If this offer is not accepted by June 30, 2026, the university will withdraw consideration of voluntary recognition as a viable path forward for this committee,” Liuzzo said, reading the university’s offer aloud, “and any future organizing effort would need to proceed through the statutory processes available under the NLRB.” 

Following the university’s denial of NewSWU’s counterproposal, NewSWU shared a post on Instagram on March 31, in collaboration with ACT-UAW, the union that represents part-time faculty and academic student workers like teaching assistants, research assistants, course assistants, and health service employees.

“This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to undermine our collective workerpower,” the Instagram post said.