GET-UP files charges against University

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, in association with the American Federation of Teachers, filed two unfair labor practice charges against the University last week.

The charges were filed with the National Labor Relations Board reporting two separate threats to reclassify the status of graduate students, thereby changing their tax status, and the withholding of regular stipend increases for graduate students.

GET-UP -- a group of graduate students that organized in the fall of 2000 with the hope of creating a union of graduate students -- continues to wait for a decision from the National Labor Relations Board on whether they have the right to be recognized as employees and hold union elections.

GET-UP spokesman David Faris detailed the "blatant violations of the law" that led GET-UP to file charges against the administration. "It's important for us to do it because they use their institutional power to threaten... but we don't have the resources... we had to resort to the law," he said.

GET-UP named a specific meeting held by Medical School Vice Dean for Research and Research Training Glen Gaulton. The charges claimed that Gaulton threatened to reclassify students from research fellows to research assistants, which would force students to pay the full city wage tax. Graduate students who conduct research and teach currently pay only half of the city's wage tax.

Faris asserted that prior cases of graduate student unionization at institutions such as New York University show that the status of students would not change, even if graduate students are recognized as employees by the NLRB and vote to unionize.

"We have precedent," he said. "The city law doesn't matter -- the classification is internal to Penn."

"The threat here is reclassification," he said, adding that GET-UP had heard personally from City Controller Jonathan Saidel that there would be no effect on tax status for students, should they be represented by a union.

"They're going to try to confuse people... [through] a threat they made to try to get people to vote no," Faris said. "The threat is potentially... campuswide."

Gaulton argued that the tax status of students will not actually be decided until the NLRB announces its decision. "We'll follow the law depending on what the NLRB decides," he said.

Gaulton noted that it would be wrong of the University to tell students whether or not their tax status would change when "the reality is we don't know," he said.

Until the decision, "everything is just guessing and conjecture... all parties should be honest with their students, as I am trying to be," he said, adding that his sole purpose was "trying to provide objective, neutral information to students" and "talk about what the possibilities are."

Gaulton argued that he believed the University was not intentionally "trying to dupe the students."

GET-UP also cited a second alleged violation by the administration in the form of a letter sent by Chemistry Professor Larry Sneddon to graduate students, in which he specifically blamed unions for influencing the graduate student stipend, which did not increase for the 2002-2003 academic year.

Faris noted that while he believes graduate students in the Chemistry Department receive raises in their stipends each year, Sneddon directly threatened to withhold these increases because of the issue of unionization.

University spokeswoman Lori Doyle called the charges a "typical union tactic" used to "stir up visibility and support."

The charges "are entirely without merit," she said, adding that the University is "not permitted to grant increases in stipends unless there have been regular increases each year and that hasn't been the case" in the Chemistry Department.

Doyle also responded to the first charge, explaining that the income of students "will be taxed just like any other employee" should graduate students be recognized as employees.

Sneddon could not be reached for comment.

After the initial filing of charges by GET-UP, the NLRB will assign an investigator to the case who will conduct full interviews with witnesses and collect documentation of alleged offenses. The NLRB will later decide on the matter separately from the decision on union elections that all parties still await.

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