As graduate employees prepare for a two-day work stoppage, critical questions remain lost in the haze of debate over their unionization. Whether they have the right to unionize is not a question. The National Labor Relations Board ruled last year that that they do have that right. The NLRB ordered a unionization vote. Voting took place on Feb. 26 and 27, 2003. Over 900 student employees voted. Unfortunately, we still do not have an official vote count. Probably because several surveys, including one by The Daily Pennsylvanian, indicated a solid majority "yes" vote, the University has used its vast resources to block the vote counting. One key question today is thus whether the University seeks to alter the substance of U.S. labor law by procedural machinations to block the unionization vote counting.
Administration arguments that graduate student employees are not employees makes sense only for people who do not know the legal history of graduate employee unionization. Being a student does not preclude a person from being an employee at his own institution. For decades, American labor law has recognized that the work graduate employees do for their own universities is just that: work. Legal decisions on this issue have never negated the worker status of working graduate students. University claims that graduate employees are not employees are addressed not to legal issues but to Penn public opinion and obscure University efforts to undermine rights established in U.S. labor law, to the detriment of University employees.
Many in the Penn community engage in debates against graduate employee unionization by recounting personal anecdotes about the horrors of unions and by citing administration accounts of ample graduate student employee compensation. Such arguments evade serious discussion of the fact that for 35 years, graduate employees have had the legal right to unionize and to bargain collectively with their employer for mutually acceptable levels of compensation.
Also lost in nostalgic accounts of the bootstrap rigor of graduate studies in days gone by is a realistic recognition of the facts of today's academic labor market. Tenure-track appointments for Ph.D.s are steadily declining, and the national trend is a rapid increase in the proportion of college teaching done by part-time faculty and graduate instructors.
The Penn administration claims that levels of graduate employee compensation have not been adequately scrutinized. There is much evidence to indicate that for many at Penn, pay and benefits do not come close to approaching the figures continually cited by the University.
The tendency among the Penn public to accept uncritically University representations of the issues at stake and facts of the case is alarming in an institution devoted to independent thinking and rigorous scholarship. We all have a responsibility to insist on full disclosure and reasoned, respectful debate. By obstructing the counting of unionization ballots, the University seeks to prevent unionization and thus to undermine the legal rights of people in the Penn community. In this context, it is just as reasonable to argue against the University's anti-unionization drive as it is to argue against unionization.
GET-UP has no intention of shutting down campus, preventing students from attending classes, preventing Penn staff from going to work or preventing faculty from teaching. They request that graduate students not teach classes but attend classes in which they are enrolled; that undergraduates attend classes taught by faculty and adjuncts but not by graduate employees; that Penn staff members carry out their regular jobs; and that faculty conduct classes without graduate employees. Everyone is invited to join the picket lines and to learn more about GET-UP and its quest for worker's rights at Penn.
As the Penn administration has endeavored to undermine workers' rights, GET-UP has acted democratically and with collegial integrity. We support the graduate employees' effort to get their votes counted. Faculty who agree that the University should stop blocking the vote counting are invited to sign our petition at www.petitiononline.com/faculty/petition.html and to forward the petition to other faculty members at Penn.David Ludden is a professor of History. Robert Vitalis is an associate professor of Political Science.
