With preliminary National Labor Relations Board hearings concerning the right of Penn graduate students to unionize ending last Wednesday, the campaign for unionization continues.
Last December, Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania filed a petition to allowÿPenn graduate students to hold elections for contract negotiations with University administrators. These hearings -- part of a string of graduate unionization attempts by private universities, including New York, Brown and Columbia universities -- were conducted by a regional officer of the NLRB, beginning in mid-January in downtown Philadelphia.
Briefs from lawyers on both sides are due on April 15, and it is expected that the NLRB will take four to six weeks to hand down a decision.
"We're generally pleased with the way [the hearings] went," University spokeswoman Lori Doyle said. "We believe that the evidence we presented during the hearings confirms what we've said all along -- that graduate students are students and not employees."
With the University's stance that no graduate students are employees, GET-UP Chairwoman Tina Collins said she and others are hoping for the best.
"Weÿjust want [the outcome] to be a unit that represents the support that we have, that represents people that are employees and provide service to the University," Collins said.
Due to the testimonies of University witnesses from the Linguistics and Earth and Environmental Sciences departments, which expanded the University's definition of what areas were included in natural sciences, GET-UP amended its position on the individuals included in its bargaining unit during the last days of the hearings to exclude research assistants in those fields of study. Earlier in the hearings, GET-UP redefined its bargaining unit to exclude students in Penn's professional schools and in the natural sciences.
But Collins added GET-UP was not abandoning these groups.
"We want to make sure that if the opportunity comes in the future that they can be in the bargaining unit, they will be involved," Collins said. "We are organizing with them."
"We're committed to fighting for all graduate employees," GET-UP co-interim spokeswoman Joanie Mazelis added.
The end of the preliminary hearings came after nearly 28 days of testimonies from the University and four days from GET-UP.
"The University felt that it was necessary to put on individual people from each department who offered essentially similar testimonies each time," Collins said. "Our testimonies were designed to each present different and unique information in the most efficient way possible."
However, Doyle noted that the hearings between Penn and GET-UP took a shorter amount of time than the hearings involving New York, Brown and Columbia Universities. While Penn took about two months to finish the hearings, the other private universities took between four and nine months. The NLRB decided in favor of the pro-unionization groups at the three other universities.
"Penn worked diligently to make this the shortest of any of the hearings that have occurred so far," Doyle said.
As both sides await the decision of the NLRB, GET-UP plans to "continue to work on our goal of building a democratic union," Mazelis said. "We're confident that the NLRB is going to rule in our favor."
Yet, according to Collins, the process is only just beginning.
"Penn has basically said that if the regional officer rules that graduate students are simultaneously employees, they will appeal," she said.
Upon appeal, the decision will move to the NLRB's national office.
