During two inhumanly frigid days last February, hundreds of graduate employees at this university voted in a union representation election. The Daily Pennsylvanian's exit poll showed that the clear majority voted for Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania/AFT, better known as GET-UP. Yet nearly a year later, those votes remain uncounted.
This cynical subversion of democratic practice can be laid squarely at the feet of the administration. College Hall has remained steadfast in its commitment to the illogical fallacy that graduate students who perform work as teaching and research assistants cannot simultaneously be students and employees and thus should be denied the basic right to form a union.
When the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled in GET-UP's favor in November 2002, Penn filed an appeal that ensured the ballots would not be counted. Despite this attempt to block our votes in the legal arena, Penn bombarded us in the weeks prior to the election with leaflets urging us to "make your voice heard, make your vote count." Only Penn's appeal, which the administration could drop at any time, stands between graduate employees and their union.
Penn apparently hopes that Bush's quiet Dec. 26 recess appointment to the NLRB will swing the board against the established right of graduate employees at private universities to collective bargaining. This ironically comes as a bipartisan labor law reform initiative gains steam in Congress, giving hope to the millions of Americans who would like to join a union but are thwarted by anti-union tactics banned in other democratic nations. When Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced the Employee Free Choice Act last November, a GET-UP member stood by his side -- proof that Penn is now seen as a representative example of employers who abuse weak labor laws.
The administration's legal obstructionism stands in stark contrast to GET-UP's agenda of positive change and mutual gain for graduate employees and the University. We remain committed to a living wage for all graduate employees, so that TAs and residential advisers can put their time into their teaching and research and studies rather than mixing cocktails at local bars to make ends meet. The standard SAS stipend of $15,000 is about $3,000 below a living wage in this city and well below Penn's own estimate of the annual cost of living.
GET-UP calls for comprehensive and affordable health care for graduate employees and their families so that individuals are not faced with the cruel choice of insuring their spouse or their child, as one colleague of mine was forced to do. Thirty-something education professionals with families should not be forced onto the same one-size-fits-all health plan as an 18-year-old student, or worse, denied any health coverage at all.
We also believe that the working conditions of graduate employees are the learning conditions of Penn's undergraduates, whose families pay about $40,000 annually to attend this university. Graduate employees are the front-line instructors who staff about 70 percent of the contact hours in large lectures and lab courses. We cannot do this crucial job properly without adequate compensation and working conditions.
The need for collective bargaining at Penn was underscored last semester when experienced TAs in the Sociology Department were informed just weeks before the start of the spring semester that their pay and benefits would be slashed. While a united front among the department's graduate students and an alliance with the faculty led the administration to temporarily reverse the cuts, there is no guarantee that this won't happen next semester, in Sociology or elsewhere.
Our movement is part of a larger pushback against the structural reform under way in the academic labor market. For several decades now, universities have been replacing full-time, tenure-track faculty with part-time instructors and graduate employees. Like adjunct faculty, graduate employees suffer unprofessional working conditions, crummy salaries and virtually no job security. We have little recourse if the terms of our employment are arbitrarily changed, and we have no grievance procedure if we're harassed or abused.
We had hoped that President Rodin's new willingness to engage with GET-UP would bring this impasse to resolution. But despite an atmosphere of cordiality and some stimulating discussion at the mid-December meeting GET-UP's leadership held with President Rodin, the song remains the same: Penn's graduate employees voted in a democratic election, and College Hall continues to abuse the loopholes in labor law to deny our basic rights.
Over the course of the past year, graduate employees across the University -- even those who initially were lukewarm to GET-UP -- have become increasingly disillusioned with the administration's refusal to allow the ballots to be counted. The union's leadership followed the law, and it has been used against us. We are angry and embarrassed that prominent lawmakers speak of Penn in the same breath as notorious union-buster Wal-Mart. Change needs to come soon.David Faris is a graduate student in political science and co-chairman of GET-UP.
