Grad student group pressing for unionization

In the midst of the festivities for Graduate Student Appreciation Week, a group of graduate students on Locust Walk tried to rally support for a union of graduate employees last week. Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, or GET-UP, publicly launched its campaign last Thursday. Over the past few months, the University has made efforts to improve the working conditions of graduate students, but GET-UP members said Penn's moves are one-time concessions to stop unionization. GET-UP said the collective bargaining ability of a union would empower graduate employees to demand better working conditions and better pay and benefits over the long term. GET-UP is open to the 700 graduate students that work as teaching assistants, research assistants or administrative assistants. The group -- affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers -- is seeking support from the administration and graduate student organizations. "A union of employees at Penn -- of graduate student employees that are conscious of both the academic side of what Penn is and the business side of what Penn is -- will really represent a new voice at the University," said GET-UP member Christina Collins, who is a research assistant and second-year Graduate School of Education doctoral student. About 50 students, mostly from the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Social Work and GSE, have attended meetings since the group first organized last October. Members said they hope to develop contacts in other graduate schools. GET-UP members said they hope to address short term issues concerning graduate employees, including stipends and benefits like health care, housing and child care. They are also interested in obtaining formal contracts, decreasing teaching assistants' workloads, increasing job security and improving teaching training programs. After the National Labor Relations Board ruled in November that graduate employees had the right to unionize at New York University and other private universities, GET-UP began writing a statement of principles and demands. Since the decision, unions -- which were previously legitimate only at public institutions -- have been forming at private universities, including Yale and Temple. And despite Penn's recent moves to improve working and living conditions for graduate students, members said that these concessions -- like increasing student stipends and providing healthcare subsidies -- were made only after GET-UP members were approached on behalf of the University to stymie union organizers. "They are trying to take steps to quell any unionization movement," added GET-UP member Todd Wolfson, who is a research assistant and second-year Graduate School of Education doctoral student. Students said that despite an increase from $11,500 to $12,800 for next year, stipends are still lower than peer universities and far below the cost of living. And although the University is subsidizing healthcare, an employee with dependents may still pay half his wages for healthcare alone. Consequently, GET-UP members said, most teaching assistants survive either by working second jobs or by taking out large government loans. And the students claimed they are already overworked. "One of the things that happens now is that graduate students are so overworked that they can't take the time to put comments on papers," said Michael Janson, a second-year doctoral student and a teaching assistant in the Political Science Department. GET-UP members said that the lack of a formal contract means that there is little regulation of workloads for teaching assistants. "There are limits on the number of students and sections you can have as a TA, and those limits are regularly exceeded," Collins said. But some teaching assistants said that their positions are part of their education and they do not consider themselves employees. And this message is regularly reinforced by the administration. Teaching assistants "have never really been employees of the University -- the teaching they've been doing is an important part of their education," said SAS Chair of Graduate Studies Joseph Farrell, who added that SAS plans to extend a teaching requirement to "more if not all" of its graduate programs. While GET-UP members have not yet approached the administration, they said they plan to do so before the end of the semester -- and expect to encounter resistance. "The administration will be wary at first because Penn has not had a graduate student union for employees before, because we're asking for a degree of control over decisions that are now primarily being made administratively," Collins said. Like the University, the two organizations that currently represent graduate students' strongest voices on campus -- the Graduate and Professional Student Association and the Graduate Student Associations Council -- seemed nonplussed. According to a GET-UP flier, GAPSA decided at a meeting in November that "they must immediately take a 'proactive' stance to head off unionization at Penn." But representatives of both GSAC and GAPSA said that they were not aware of the unionization effort and had not taken any position on it. "With or without a union, the University has to stay competitive with its peers to attract the best and the brightest grad students," outgoing GAPSA Chairman Kyle Farley said. "GSAC and GAPSA both have great relationships with the administration -- clearly, they care about these issues."