The NLRB had good news for a group of New York City medical residents and interns who want to unionize. But graduate student assistants in the Big Apple had no such luck.

Essentially the board said the residents and interns at St. Barnabas Hospital are employees, not students, and thus eligible to seek recognition as a bargaining unit, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The dispute involved 280 residents and interns at the Bronx, N.Y., hospital. They voted on joining a union in 2009, but the results were impounded after the hospital challenged whether they had a right to organize.

Meanwhile, the NLRB's Regional Director Celeste Mattina dismissed a petition filed on behalf of New York University grad students who work as teaching and research assistants and want to organize a union.

In her dismissal, Mattina cited a 2003 NLRB decision that such grad students are not considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act, MyFoxNY.com noted.