No decision on grad union yet

After the heated debates, long marches down Locust Walk and weeks of testimony back and forth, Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania and administrators continue to wait on a decision regarding the rights of Penn graduate students to hold union elections.

Last spring, both sides presented their arguments to the National Labor Relations Board in order to settle the long-standing dispute. Although the case wrapped up in late April, a decision from the NLRB has yet to be announced.

GET-UP is "almost 100 percent sure we're going to get a decision before classes start," GET-UP spokesman David Faris said.

Deputy Provost Peter Conn, however, is less optimistic. He attributes the lengthy wait to the "complex and difficult questions" that pertain to the case and the "mysterious workings of the NLRB."

"We have no idea when the decision will be coming," he said.

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania is a group of graduate students that came together in the fall of 2000 in hopes of creating a unified body to represent graduate students at Penn in negotiations with the University.

The students feel their work as research and teaching assistants deserve enough merit for them to be called both students and employees of the University.

If the University is forced to officially recognize graduate students as employees, the students would gain the right to negotiate stipends and health care benefits, among other issues.

Graduate students are "responsible for much of the teaching that goes on at this university," GET-UP spokeswoman Deirdre Brill said.

After being told that University would not allow them to hold union elections, GET-UP collected the required amount of authorization cards needed to take the case in front of the NLRB -- more than 30 percent of the students who initially signed a petition to hold elections.

Penn graduate students were motivated by many recent cases across the nation, including the decade-long attempt of Yale students to unionize, as well as the decision by the NLRB that graduate students at New York University had the right to vote on unionizing in 2000.

Within the past year, students at Columbia and Tufts universities have also been granted the right to hold union elections by the NLRB in separate cases.

Penn administrators continue to insist that the only job of graduate students is learning as students and that working closely with faculty as teaching and research assistants is part of the experience.

Because of the "diversity of programs" and the "immense diversity of student experiences," Conn said, the University "has felt and continues to feel that a union framework is simply inappropriate for the reality of our students."

"It isn't a workplace, it's an academic setting," Conn stated.

Furthermore, he said that he believes the monetary support given by the University to graduate students in the form of stipends and health care with "no expectation of return" is an investment in the "intellectual and scholarly future" of the next generation.

The University, in turn, is "optimistic at several levels" about winning the case, said Conn, and even if a vote is granted, he expects the majority of graduate students will reject a union.

Although no recent developments have been announced by the NLRB, GET-UP remains positive that the decision will be in their favor.

According to Faris, the University's argument "has not been convincing to the court or anybody... legally, it's a total bust."

Faris also accuses the University of conducting closed-door, anti-union meetings with graduate students to purposely spread "confusion and misinformation."

Responding to GET-UP's charge that the University is practicing "intellectual dishonesty," Conn calls the accusation "deeply disappointing."

Penn is an institution committed to "inquiry and debate" and students "should be informed... hear the arguments on all sides of this," Conn said.

"I would say they're the ones manipulating the situation," added School of Medicine Vice Dean for Research and Research Training Glen Gaulton, who has held meetings for his students regarding unionization.

"Frankly, it was responsible behavior of us to talk to our students," he said.

Should GET-UP win the right to hold elections, they fully expect to earn the chance to represent graduate employees as a union.

"There is no official voice for students," Faris said. "The only way to have any leverage is a union... we think we have a very good shot at winning."

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