Cornell grad students vote down union

In a new development in the national debate over graduate student unionization, the overwhelming majority of Cornell University students decided not to be represented by Cornell Association of Student Employees/United Auto Workers in an election held last week.

The decision marks only the second time students have voted on unionization at a private university, after students at New York University voted yes to unionization in 2000.

The election was supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, which decided in July that Cornell students had the right to hold union elections.

With a turnout of 2,043 students voting out of 2,318 registered voters, the election was a landslide decision to keep Cornell graduate students union-free, with 69.9 percent of students voting not to unionize.

Currently, the University and Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania await a decision from the NLRB regarding GET-UP's right to hold union elections at Penn. Hearings on the matter ended last April.

Although there remains only speculation about when the NLRB will finally announce its decision, each side makes a completely different prediction about the outcome of an election here on campus.

"If the NLRB determines that there should be a union election at Penn, we're confident that Penn graduate students would come to the same reasoned decision as those at Cornell," University spokeswoman Lori Doyle said.

Regardless of the vote at Cornell, GET-UP spokesman David Faris still feels that precedent for unionization is much more far-reaching.

"In the last five years, there's been 14 victories and 2 defeats," he said, adding that, to GET-UP, the Cornell election is only "a blip on the radar."

Graduate students at several public universities have unionized in recent years.

"I don't feel the loss has any implications for GET-UP here," he said. "We still feel like we have a very good shot at winning here."

GET-UP Chairman Joe Kable agreed, saying that GET-UP does not see "the Cornell vote as indicative of any new trend" in the views of graduate students towards unionization.

"The overall trend has been in the opposite direction" of the results of the Cornell election, he said.

GET-UP began in fall 2000 as a group of graduate students seeking to unionize, later affiliating with the national union American Federation of Teachers, much the same as Cornell students joined with the United Auto Workers.

"I can't really speculate into why they lost... no one election is directly applicable to another," Faris said. "In terms of results, that's just the democratic process at work... you can't win them all."

The New York Times quoted one Cornell graduate student as attributing the election result, in part, to general disagreement with UAW political beliefs.

GET-UP continues to maintain that the best option for both parties at this point would be for the University to simply let GET-UP hold elections and have the graduate students themselves decide on the issue.

However, Doyle insists that the University has reason to leave the matter to the NLRB.

"We feel there are fundamental, educational principles at stake, and apparently the NLRB is also taking them seriously as they consider... the case made in our hearings last spring," she said.

As far as having any idea when the announcement by the NLRB should be made, Faris said GET-UP's sources say "it could be December" before anything is announced, although he added, "I can't say that with any confidence."

While waiting for a decision from the NLRB, GET-UP remains active, most recently filing unfair labor practice charges against the University.

The charges are still under investigation by the NLRB, and Faris noted that there may be "news on the unfair labor charges sometime soon."

GET-UP is also electing a new leadership committee to head their weekly meetings and continues to educate graduate students by handing out information at a table on Locust Walk.

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