Guest Column by Olivia Harding | One year on: We're still workers and we will win
Exactly one year ago, in its Columbia University decision, the National Labor Relations Board reconciled a decades-long inconsistency in employment law: It recognized that teaching, research and other academic labor done by graduate students at private universities is in fact work. The very same labor at public institutions has been “work” since 1969. This legal recognition extends the right to negotiate with the University administration to graduate students at Penn, ensuring that we have a voice in our working conditions. It is the intention of Graduate Employees Together at the University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP) to secure that right, just as many public universities’ graduate student bodies have before us — by organizing as a labor union of graduate student workers and receiving formal recognition from the university.