With posters declaring "Penn works because we do" and "GET-UP for a change," a crowd of more than 100 gathered yesterday on College Green to support the movement to unionize graduate students.
Held by Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, a group which seeks to unionize graduate students at Penn, the rally came approximately one month after the group launched its formal effort to bring a union to the University.
GET-UP is currently holding an authorization card drive, in which membership cards are signed and collected by those who would potentially be represented by the union. Such cards are the first step in a potentially lengthy unionization process.
Two weeks ago, Deputy Provost Peter Conn sent an e-mail Penn's 10,000 graduate and professional students, cautioning them to consider the consequences of unionization before signing the cards.
Yesterday's rally also fell on the one-year anniversary of the National Labor Relations Board's ruling that graduate students at New York University seeking to unionize were considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act and therefore had the right to form a union.
Penn's administration has maintained that it does not feel graduate students at the University can be considered employees under the National Labor Relations Board's guidelines, and that such a union would not be beneficial to graduate students' education at Penn.
However, the graduate students and others who turned out for yesterday's rally seemed undaunted by such assertions, wearing GET-UP T-shirts and buttons and handing out candy to those passing by.
Emily West, a second year Ph.D candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication said the rally was held "to raise awareness and show everyone at Penn basically what kind of support and feeling there is behind the card drive for the union."
Chants of "Teaching, research, grading too -- Penn works because we do!" and "Penn has money, they can pay, so why'd they sign our health away?" filled the air as speakers voiced their opinions.
"What a difference a voice makes!" said Michael Janson, a political science Ph.D. student, as he took the microphone and kicked off the rally.
Other speakers addressed topics such as the difficulties faced by international students, students with dependents and changes to this year's Penn Student Insurance Plan -- which serves the majority of Penn graduate and professional students -- that left students paying more money for a decreased benefit.
"It doesn't look like it on the face of it, but they're nickel-and-dimeing us to death," English graduate student Mark Rifkin said. "If they wanted to cover all of graduate and professional students' health care, it would have cost less than 8 percent of their profit. They didn't do that, they didn't come anywhere near because frankly, they don't care about the health of graduate students."
Other speakers included a representative from the Penn Law Library union, College sophomore Sue Casey and Mark Callahan, president of Temple University Graduate Students Association, which recently gained recognition as the first graduate employee union in Pennsylvania.
History Professor David Ludden also gave support to the GET-UP's unionization movement, saying "Students can be union members and employees and organize collectively and still be colleagues."
The rally came as part of Campus Equity Week as other rallies and events being held by graduate employee and higher education unions across North America. In Philadelphia, rallies similar to the one at Penn were held at Temple and the Community College of Philadelphia.
GET-UP organizers say they were pleased with the numbers of those who participated in yesterday's event.
"Considering how hard it is to get people to commit at this time of year... I felt like it was a really good turnout, not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of the kind of support people were showing," West said.
