The University's graduate student workers will head to the polls today to vote on whether to form a union.
The unionization election will begin Wednesday in Bodek Lounge in Houston Hall. Graduate Employees Together University of Pennsylvania-UAW (GET-UP), a group of graduate teaching and research employees aiming to improve working conditions and strengthen their larger voice at the University, is seeking to bargain for a union contract matching their current needs and gain representation by United Auto Workers.
If the vote passes, GET-UP will become the largest union at Penn in recent history with about 4,500 workers.
The formation of a union would mean that all graduate student workers would be able to participate in the bargaining process and vote on the ratification of any proposed contract.
“This upcoming election is our chance to democratically convey what we already know to be true, which is that Penn graduate workers want a union,” fifth-year biology Ph.D. candidate and GET-UP field coordinator and organizer Luella Allen-Waller told The Daily Pennsylvanian earlier this semester.
The unionization election was originally scheduled for April 16 and 17 but was suddenly postponed on April 11, just one day after GET-UP won an appeal against the National Labor Relations Board to include Educational Fellowship Recipients in the pool of eligible voters.
In an April 16 email to graduate and professional students, Provost John Jackson Jr. and Vice Provost for Education Karen Detlefsen wrote that the postponement was due to an April 10 order from the NLRB determining that approximately 300 Ph.D. students should be permitted to vote. The email, which was obtained by the DP, referenced several processes that the newly eligible students must undergo — such as being notified of their right to privacy from the union and NLRB.
“These 300 students must now be added to the voter list, which must be shared with the NLRB and the UAW," Jackson and Detlefsen wrote in the email. "There are legal timeframes for these important processes … that could not be met for an election on April 16 and April 17."
A University spokesperson wrote to the DP earlier this month that on April 15, the University and GET-UP agreed to a stipulation rescheduling the election for May.
“We were not expecting there to be a delay,” Allen-Waller said. “When we won that appeal, the fact that [Penn] requested an additional two weeks to get the voter list indicates that they had not begun to prepare for the possibility that we would win that appeal.”
Fifth-year history Ph.D candidate and GET-UP organizer Sam Schirvar told the DP that an election is “an opportunity for graduate workers to stand up and stand together and show Penn that we want to have a voice in our working conditions” and that possible platforms for the organization include grievance arbitration, costs of child care, accessibility of parental leave, and protection policies against discrimination for graduate students.
Graduate student workers face increasing housing and living costs in Philadelphia, a lack of rights in the workplace, and uncertain futures given the nature of higher education and unstable regulation of visas and work authorization for international student workers, according to GET-UP.
“There's often a call for higher stipends and an increase in compensation to match the rising cost of living,” Schirvar said. “When a majority of graduate workers vote yes, then the university will be legally obligated to enter into negotiations with us.”
In October 2023, graduate students seeking to form a union filed 3,000 authorization cards with the NLRB, but the University subsequently refused to voluntarily recognize the union. In March, GET-UP released a bargaining survey asking graduate workers to indicate their priorities for including various working conditions, wages, and benefits in a contract.
Earlier this month, 224 Penn faculty members expressed their support for graduate student workers seeking unionization by signing a supporting statement drafted by the American Association of University Professors.
“We have every intention to win our election on May 1 and 2,” fifth-year pharmacology Ph.D. candidate and GET-UP organizer Kyla Mace wrote to the DP. Ballots will be counted and results will be announced on May 3.
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