Carrying signs and chanting "Democracy delayed is democracy denied," a group of about 50 Penn graduate students, and supporters made its way down Locust Walk yesterday in an effort to call attention to the students' unionization efforts.
Starting at 40th and Locust streets, the group, representing Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, slowly made their way toward College Hall, symbolizing the pace at which they believe their negotiations with Penn administrators have progressed.
GET-UP is currently involved in National Labor Relations Board hearings to determine if certain Penn graduate students have the right hold union elections
"We're going to crawl very slowly down Locust Walk," GET-UP member Ronald Kim, a Linguistics graduate student, said.
GET-UP representatives said they believe that the administration has purposefully slowed down the hearings process in a stall tactic to prevent unionization.
"Given the fact that they are the ones who are contesting our right to an election, it is the administration that is preventing us from forming a union," said Robert Fairbanks, a third-year graduate student in social welfare.
But Deputy Provost Peter Conn said that it is GET-UP, and not the administration, that has stalled hearings at the NLRB's local headquarters downtown.
Last month, GET-UP changed the bargaining unit that it seeks to represent -- abandoning all students in the professional schools -- which resulted in a slowdown in the process, according to Conn.
"The union has on more than one occasion changed the definition of the unit it seeks to represent," he said. "These changes have affected the timing of the process."
GET-UP members, though, claim that the hearings are a deliberate stall tactic by the administration to drain GET-UP, financially and otherwise.
"They are trying to take as long as possible and putting up as many witnesses as possible to stall a vote as long as possible," said Martha Schoolman, a fifth-year English Ph.D. candidate and GET-UP member.
Conn said that the NLRB hearings are necessary because of the size and complexity of the university and the case.
"The University does not want to do this in a hurry because these are some of the most important questions that affect private universities," Conn said. "So they ought to be addressed carefully and systematically."
Christopher Leahy, chairman of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, had similar concerns.
"I think that GET-UP has brought a lot of these problems upon themselves by changing the petition," said Leahy, a third-year law student. "They can't make changes and expect the other side to be ready five seconds later."
However, Fairbanks said that the administration is spending too much money fighting GET-UP, and that the whole University is suffering as a result.
"No matter where you stand on this issue, the administration is spending thousands of dollars to deny us our right to have a democratic voice," he said.
According to GET-UP, Temple University spent close to $750,000 to prevent graduate student unionization, although Temple was unsuccessful. Also, GET-UP claims, Penn pays about $2,000 a day in fees to fight unionization.
Conn said he did not have numbers to either substantiate or refute GET-UP's claims.
Fairbanks said that GET-UP seeks to force Penn to stop acting like a business.
"Our main goal is to try to turn the tide of what is a nationwide issue, which is the corporatization of universities," Fairbanks said. "The university is being run like a corporation, as opposed to an institution of higher learning."
Fairbanks cited downsizing, cost cutting and granting fewer professors tenure as examples of corporate-like behavior. He said that such cost-cutting techniques have made it difficult for grad students to receive appropriate health care benefits and livable wages.
"We want working conditions that are not exploitative; we would like to be respected for the work that we do," he said.
GET-UP members received encouragement last week when the NLRB ruled in favor of graduate students holding union elections at Columbia University.
But Leahy is unsure whether last week's decision will set a precedent for the Penn hearings.
"Describing the Columbia situation as legal precedent is not accurate," Leahy said. "There is a whole different set of circumstances and a whole set of differences."
According to Conn, those differences include the fact that the union at Columbia represents a "broadly inclusive unit," whereas GET-UP does not.
"I am unpersuaded that there is much interest among students in the [Penn graduate] community," Conn said.
And Leahy does not see that interest either.
"My perspective is that there is remarkably little enthusiasm for GET-UP," he said. "I don't think they've connected with the majority of students in any meaningful way."
Fairbanks said that it is GET-UP's mission to represent a majority of graduate students.
"We intend and always have intended to represent all graduate students," he said. "We feel that it is imperative to have a collective voice to stand shoulder to shoulder with our colleagues at the University."
