Undergraduate Assembly member Lincoln Ellis wasn't focused on undergraduates at Sunday night's UA meeting.
Ellis, a College senior, proposed a resolution to the UA body regarding the rights of graduate teaching assistants and research assistants to unionize.
Specifically, the resolution -- which ultimately failed -- asked the University administration to take "a position of neutrality" in regards to graduate RA and TA unionization. This would mean that the administration would not appeal a pending National Labor Relations Board decision if Penn students are granted the right to hold elections.
"What use is it to spend money union-busting?" Ellis asked. "It is our money being spent."
Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania was formed in fall 2000 for the purpose of advocating the recognition of graduate students as employees who have the right to negotiate stipends and benefits, along with other issues.
The administration has been adamantly opposed to giving graduate students the right to unionize as it believes that they should not be treated as employees, but as students whose primary focus is learning.
GET-UP brought its case before the Philadelphia branch of the NLRB last spring, and although arguments wrapped up in April, the board has yet to issue a decision on the matter. However, the NLRB has ruled in favor of graduate students seeking to hold union elections at New York, Columbia, Brown and Temple universities.
In addition to asking for a position of neutrality, Ellis' resolution asked the administration to agree to "negotiate in good faith with any democratically elected union" if the students created one.
Ellis drafted the resolution himself, as he said he was personally interested in the dispute.
"I felt the issue of unionization is relevant to undergrads, and that the undergrad voice needed to be heard," Ellis said. "I met with some undergrads who were concerned with the prospect of this issue being dragged out."
But after spending the duration of the meeting debating the topic, the UA voted down the resolution by a count of 16-5 for a variety of reasons.
Some UA members said they did not want to prevent the administration from appealing if the NLRB decided in favor of graduate student unionization.
"The resolution was asking the school to take a neutrality pact... but the school should have the right to appeal," Engineering junior and UA member Daven Johnson said.
"We'd be tying their hands."
"I don't think we should advocate precluding the legal process from carrying itself out," UA Vice Chairman Ethan Kay added.
Kay, a Wharton senior, said he was also concerned about the effects of graduate student unionization on the undergraduate community.
"We are acting in the interest of the undergrads, and graduate unionization has the potential for strike and negative effects on the undergraduate student body," Kay said.
Some UA members were afraid to pass the resolution because of an incident that occurred at York University in Toronto. A TA strike there caused undergraduates to miss 22 teaching days.
"The UA decided that we're not going to weigh in until after the Graduate and Professional Students Assembly does," Ellis said after Sunday night's meeting. "The undergrads may weigh in again at a later time in a different form... we weren't ready to voice an opinion at this time."
