Results from union vote await appeal

Ballots deciding the future of graduate-employee unionization at Penn might have seen the light of day for the last time yesterday in Houston Hall. The National Labor Relations Board closed the polls at 7 p.m., sorting and sealing hundreds of votes under the careful supervision of lawyers and observers representing both Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania and the University. The votes will be impounded until Penn's appeal to the national office of the NLRB is heard. The results will be released only if the appeal is dismissed. Should the University prevail in the courts, not even the total number of ballots cast will be released, according to NLRB officials. "We can only know who wins when the administration drops its appeal," GET-UP spokesperson Joanna Kempner said last night, before a GET-UP "victory party" celebrating the election. Deputy Provost Peter Conn noted in an e-mail statement that "all the messages I received over the past two days from the faculty and graduate students who spoke to me personally or by e-mail indicated that GET-UP lost this election." Frustrations over who was and was not allowed to vote, however, continued throughout the final day of voting, as many graduate students attempting to vote were turned away by the NLRB. However, one student, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was upset not that he could not vote, but that the NLRB allowed him to -- a College sophomore studying mathematics, his submatriculation into a master's program in the School of Arts and Sciences and "because [he] graded papers for a professor one time" apparently made the student eligible to vote in the election. "Do you want to know what my vote was?" he asked. "I abstained." "I wanted to prove a point," he added, explaining his abstention. "I don't think that... my vote should count." Shocked that he can cast a ballot as an undergraduate when most graduate students are not allowed to vote, the student saw his voting rights as evidence of the arbitrary nature of the NLRB. "Then why can't all undergraduate students be allowed to vote?" he asked, adding that "GET-UP should have addressed the issue, delayed the vote a few months and solved this." As another passing voter loudly announced his intention to vote for union representation "because I want to say, 'Screw you,' to Judy Rodin," the College sophomore responded with his thoughts on the unionization drive. "When you say, 'Screw Judy Rodin,' by that you mean, 'Screw the University,' and by that you mean, 'Screw what the University stands for, which is undergraduate education,'" he said. Nevertheless, with the election over and the ballots under lock and key, GET-UP will be focusing its efforts elsewhere. "The union doesn't go away," Kempner said, adding that "we already have a union, it's just not recognized yet." "A union is a living, growing organism, and we constantly organize," she added, noting that GET-UP will continue to petition the University to drop its appeal. The University, however, has not been distracted from Penn's "core mission by the agitation of the past several months" and will not be distracted in the future, according to Conn. "The community of scholars and students has proven to be durable and resilient, and our collegial values remain robustly intact."

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