"I'm a big advocate of it for the simple fact that in situations where student bodies as a group are unable to unionize, they have no recourse, no resources and no real ability to have issues addressed at a legal level," he said.

"If you're going to use these individuals in a capacity as employees and try to skirt around it by saying they're students, it's completely unfair to the graduate students," Dearborn added. "It's sort of a labor pool they're able to abuse."

Although critics of the ruling have argued that allowing TFs to unionize would damage their working relationship with their professors, Ascherman Professor of Economics Richard B. Freeman, an expert on labor relations, said he did not think that would present a problem.

"I don't think it would affect their relationship at all because the union would be negotiating with the administration," he said.

Dearborn, who worked on a unionized teaching staff at the State University of New York at Albany before coming to Harvard, agreed that unionization would not strain TF-professor relationships.

"I think that's sort of rhetoric that's thrown out by opponents [of the ruling]," Dearborn said. "In many cases teachers have unions, so my experience at the University of New York was that [the professors] supported us, whether it be above-table or not."

In contrast to at NYU, where teaching assistants have asked for more pay, housing and increased medical coverage, many TFs at Harvard say they are happy with their terms of employment.