This week, NYU appealed the regional decision.

"The precedent for 25 years has been that TAs are students, not employees. They are working toward fulfillment of degree [requirements]," says John Beckman, the university's director of public affairs.

NYU's decision to appeal has consequences for universities across the country. Usually, local NLRB decisions are bound to the region of the deciding board. But any ruling affirmed or overruled on appeal becomes a nationwide edict.

At Yale, administration officials and graduate students will be watching the case with interest.

Yale teaching assistants already have a shadow union, the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO). With its unacknowledged status, it has had limited success petitioning Yale to meet its members' needs.

Last year, a Yale protest to a TA strike resulted in an NLRB decision not to allow Yale graduate students to bargain collectively.

But the NYU case is different, Yale graduate students say, because it rests not on recognizing a single action against an employer, but on the very principle of collective bargaining they wish to promote.

"We need a union for general representation, to negotiate pay levels and that sort of thing," said Rebecca Ruquist, the fourth-year Yale graduate student who chairs GESO. "All of us are working without contracts. Some students had their pay cut half way through the semester--that's inhumane," she said.