Legislation recently introduced in Congress would require private universities to recognize teaching and research assistants as a union if they elect to form one.
That's big news for Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania, the graduate student group that wants to be recognized as a union by Penn. Their goal was set back by a 2004 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that graduate students are not employees and do not have the right to organize under the NLRB.
GET-UP was established in 2001, in the wake of an NLRB ruling that permitted a graduate student union at New York University, prompting students nationwide to organize for unionization.
A union would give graduate students the power to secure important benefits, such as improved health care coverage and an academic grievance procedure, GET-UP chairwoman and Ph.D. student Shonni Enelow said.
The legislation's passage is one of two events that could overturn the current law, obliging Penn to recognize the union if enough students vote in favor of one. The other - which GET-UP has been anticipating - is the election of a Democratic president this fall. Given the Democrats' typically labor-friendly appointments to the NLRB, which usually makes decisions along party lines, it is likely that the current law would be changed, Enelow said.
Whichever way current law is overturned, impact for GET-UP and Penn would be "huge," Enelow said. "If we have a majority [in favor of unionization], the University would be mandated to give us a union."
GET-UP has been planning an election next spring for graduate students to vote on whether to unionize.
An election for the same purpose was held in 2003 amidst strong opposition from administration and some students and faculty, but the votes were never counted. The University appealed students' right to hold the election to the NLRB because of "the fundamental educational principles that [were] at stake," according to a Web site created by Penn administrators.
They reasoned that students are not employees and teaching is "an essential component of graduate students' educational experience." The NLRB, which was running the election, impounded the ballots, leaving the votes uncounted.
A year after the election, GET-UP staged a two-day strike to protest the University's inaction and persuaded it to drop the appeal, which was still being decided.
Then, in summer 2004, the Republican-controlled NLRB ruled against students seeking unionization at Brown University, overturning its 2000 decision at NYU. Soon after, a regional board applied that precedent to Penn. Students could still organize, but schools were not required to recognize the unions.
GET-UP continued its fight for a union. Based on the findings of a Daily Pennsylvanian exit poll from the 2003 election, they argued that more than half of voting students wanted a union.
And with the new legislation and presidential election presenting opportunities for changing current law, GET-UP unionizing now seems like a possibility - if enough graduate students support it.
GET-UP Secretary Andre Callot said the group has taken a quieter approach over the last year, talking to individuals about the benefits of a union.
"Whatever students want from the union, that's what the union becomes," he said.
Graduate and Professional Student Assembly representative and GET-UP member Lucas Champollion, who is advocating his personal views rather than those of the organizations he is involved in, said a union would give students the leverage they need.
"Sometimes the administrators listen to us and sometimes they don't," Champollion said. "We would be in a better position if we were not petitioning but negotiating and they would meet us at eye level."
University spokeswoman Lori Doyle said Penn does not view graduate students as employees, and it would still oppose unionization efforts.
She added that the administration works closely with GAPSA - which maintains a neutrality policy on unionization - to represent the graduate community and has increased stipends several times in recent years.
Callot noted that recent gains for graduate students, such as an increase in stipends, make it harder to rally support, but GET-UP is still confident that the vote will be in their favor.
"Historically and currently, we know we have a lot of support," Enelow said. "We really hope to move forward, get these laws changed and shift the way the University thinks about graduate students."
