The National Labor Relations Board gave Penn graduate students the right to hold union elections in a decision announced yesterday.
The decision will direct an election supervised by the NLRB in early 2003 for certain groups of graduate students to decide whether or not they will be represented by a union in contract negotiations with the University.
The announcement came more than seven months after hearings ended between the University and Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania in late April, and a year after GET-UP initially filed a petition for an election with the NLRB in December 2001.
"GET-UP is thrilled with the decision," GET-UP spokesman David Faris said. "We're really excited to get down to business and hopefully win this election."
GET-UP was formed more than two years ago as a group of graduate students eager to organize a union to represent students, vying for better health care and stipends from the University as well as the right to be recognized as employees.
While the University continued to maintain that learning, not teaching, was the sole job of graduate students, GET-UP argued that the important work of graduate students in teaching and researching across the University should give them the right to receive benefits as employees.
Although GET-UP is already preparing for an election, University President Judith Rodin announced last night that the University will appeal the NLRB's decision in the next two weeks.
"The complicated decision arbitrarily divides and discriminates among graduate students in determining who would be eligible to vote and who would not," Rodin said in the statement, adding, "The decision makes no sense for graduate students at Penn."
"We hope that the students themselves, like their counterparts at Cornell, would come to the same conclusion," Rodin said. "We disagree with this decision and plan to appeal to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, as have Brown, Tufts and Columbia."
GET-UP Co-Chairman Joe Kable noted that GET-UP fully expected the University to appeal the NLRB's decision. "We're not surprised that the University is appealing the decision," he said.
"The decision is not arbitrary, it's based on the legal precedent in the NYU case," he added.
GET-UP will "go forward with our work on the campaign," Kable said, and "continue to get our vision for the University out."
Should the University appeal the decision, the election will still take place as dictated by the NLRB early next year, but the votes will be locked and both parties left to await yet another decision.
Even if GET-UP eventually wins an appeal and the votes are counted, there is always the possibility of losing an election.
At Cornell University last month, the majority of students voted against unionization, after the administration allowed elections to take place without appealing the decision.
GET-UP is "saving the parties for after the election" and focusing on gearing up for the election and "getting the facts out there," Faris said.
"We've got a good shot at winning this election [but] that doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work ahead of us," Faris said.
The NLRB's decision to allow union elections is only the fifth time graduate students at a private university have won the right to hold elections in the hopes of unionizing.
Graduate students at New York, Columbia, Brown and Tufts universities have all been allowed to hold union elections by the NLRB, although only NYU left the decision uncontested. The other universities are still awaiting decisions on appeals.
The NLRB stipulated that graduate students who would be part of a bargaining unit should students vote in favor of unionizing, include Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants in the humanities and social sciences and some Master's degree candidates, but not RAs in the natural sciences.
Students in professional schools, such as the School of Law, the Wharton School and the School of Dental Medicine would also not be included in a union.
Though it is unforeseeable how long the process will take, GET-UP will continue to fight for graduate student rights for as long as it takes.
"It should be a fun ride," GET-UP Co-Chairwoman Elizabeth Williamson said.
