The fight for graduate student unionization at Penn has seen its share of rallies, protests and petitions -- but the debate has not escalated to the troubling atmosphere now surrounding Yale University.
A panel of professors, legal experts and Yale graduate students recently released a report that claimed some faculty members had threatened to hurt students' academic careers if they supported the formation of a union.
The claims were denied by Yale's communications office, according to a New York Times article. Leaders of the unionization drive, however, said that their defeat at union elections last May was due in part to these intimidatory acts.
According to Anita Seth, who heads Yale's Graduate Employees and Student Organization, GESO filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board nine months ago regarding instances of intimidating behavior on the part of faculty, including the barring of union discussions in certain department facilities and the threat of being thrown out of a laboratory for striking.
"There's a really strong anti-union atmosphere here at Yale," Seth said, adding that while the NLRB has yet to respond to the charges filed, the report released seems to be an accurate reflection of what she has been hearing from fellow students.
At Penn, however, graduate students said that their interests in the unionization debate -- which continues as Penn awaits a decision from the NLRB on whether votes from the graduate student union elections held last February can be counted -- have not been swayed in any way by faculty members.
In fact, many of them said that they have found support among their professors in this matter.
"I've been keeping up a lot with the union at Penn," third-year education graduate student Emily Greytak said. "I haven't heard much from the professors, but if I've gotten any sense from the faculty, it was supportive" of unionization.
Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania spokesman Dillon Brown said that the organization met more resistance on the administration's part than from the faculty.
According to Brown, the faculty position has been one of neutrality.
The opposition that students have faced from University administration has involved information regarding their tax status, the immutability of their stipends and the concept that "collegiality would be hurt," Brown said.
He noted, however, that the administration's comments were not directed towards GET-UP itself.
"Generally, the administration does not talk to" GET-UP, Brown said.
Commenting on the atmosphere at Yale, Brown said that "it doesn't seem unlikely" that faculty threats have been made.
"The professors are in a bad situation because they are in between," he said.
Other Penn graduate students said that the discussion over this issue was not a topic of conversation with their professors.
"They didn't really want us to talk about it, but from the tone of their comments I think they support it," a second-year Wharton graduate student said.
Institutions like the Law School have not placed much emphasis on teaching and research assistant positions and, therefore, are somewhat neutral on the issue.
"In my school, [the union debate] is not that relevant to the graduate student experience," a third-year Law School student said. "I'm a research assistant, but it is not a relevant part of the experience."
Regarding threats to prevent unionization, the student said that he had heard of "none whatsoever."
