Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania opened the eighth day of hearings concerning the right of Penn graduate students to unionize yesterday with a clarification that decreased the number of groups the organization seeks to represent.
Since Jan. 11, hearings on the rights of Penn graduate research and teaching assistants to hold union elections have been underway in downtown Philadelphia, overseen by an examiner from the National Labor Relations Board. Within the last two years, decisions concerning graduate students at New York, Temple and Brown universities have set the precedent for the rights of such students to hold union elections.
While GET-UP initially planned to include professional graduate students in its bargaining unit, lawyers for the organization announced yesterday that graduate students in the professional schools -- including students in the Wharton MBA program, the Veterinary School, the Dental School and the Law School -- are now to be excluded from GET-UP's petition.
Students in the Graduate School of Fine Arts, the School of Social Work and certain programs in the Graduate School of Education are also excluded from the unit.
According to Wendy White, senior counsel of the University's Office of the General Counsel, the modification is a mystery to the administration's lawyers.
"I don't know why they are picking and choosing," White said.
And John Langel, Penn's leading attorney for the case, said that he is "trying to figure out what their theme is" in excluding certain parties from their bargaining unit.
"Their position is, essentially, that graduate students are different depending on which school or program they are in," Langel said.
"We are going to continue to proceed with our present position that graduate students are students and that the unit that GET-UP seeks to represent does not make sense. Their requests are inconsistent with what has transpired at other universities and with what students do at Penn," he added.
Graduate Students Association Council Chairman Darren Glass expressed concern for the direction that the unionization issue is taking.
"The fact that a union would represent some of our constituents but not others is certainly one of the factors that makes the question of whether or not a union is in the best interest of graduate students at Penn a complicated issue," he said in an e-mail statement.
"The more complicated the line between who is and who is not included gets, the more complicated the issue as a whole becomes."
However, GET-UP spokesman Ed Webb said that the modification was made to be in keeping with the results of the cases at New York and Brown universities.
The bargaining units of the graduate students in those two cases included graders and teaching, graduate and research assistants in certain departments, but not professional school students. "We've been guided by the precedents in these other two cases," he said.
GET-UP now defines its bargaining unit as including all graduate students who serve as teaching assistants, teaching fellows, graders, administrative assistants, lecturers and research assistants, leaving out graduate students of specified programs such as the life, physical and engineering sciences.
With their announcement of a modified group, Webb said that GET-UP was merely clarifying their bargaining unit at the request of the University's lawyers, and that modification of the unit was "all part of the normal procedure of the hearings."
"One starts from a broad definition, then narrows it down and adds in more detail as evidence is presented," Webb said.
Penn Graduate Students Against Unionization Chairman Max Dionisio expressed concern over the latest modification.
"I find it rather sad that GET-UP has effectively divided the School of Arts and Sciences in half," Dionisio said. "By removing the physical sciences from the bargaining unit, GET-UP has effectively turned their back on the problems of their fellow students."
Webb maintained that the core of the bargaining unit "is as it was," and that the group is "trying to remain consistent with precedents."
Though lawyers representing the University asked for a three-day recess to assess the changes, the examiner denied the request. Instead, the counsel was granted the right to recall witnesses
