Lauren Bialystok: Employee rights, student needs

When you're a student on a tight budget, $350 is a lot of money.

In the middle of August, many of Penn's 10,000 graduate students were informed that they had to fork over an additional $350 this year because their University health premiums had been raised by 35 percent. You can't go to school without health coverage, and by late summer, you can't change providers very easily.

The announcement added fuel to the graduate student unionization movement, Graduate Students Together-University of Pennsylvania, already in the works since last spring.

Contrary to some people's opinions, though, this most recent burden wasn't the only impetus for the students to unionize.

Last fall, Ed Webb -- a second-year political science Ph.D. student, father and GET-UP spokesman -- got together with some peers to talk about graduate student life at Penn. At that point, even before the premium hikes, Webb said health coverage consumed nearly 10 percent of the average student's stipend, and those with two or more dependents, like him, paid closer to 50 percent of their earnings -- approximately $5,500.

Simultaneously, rent in University City continued to rise and stipends remained stagnant.

But even these grievances, and others like them, are not the core reason that graduate students should form a union.

Some people hear the word "union" and they think of sweatshop workers in the 1920s, or disgruntled auto plant workers. But for graduate students with a hefty array of academic obligations, a union is just a legal mechanism to ensure that their employer -- in this case, the University -- takes their interests into account.

With a union in place, decisions about issues such as health care rates and student stipends could not be implemented without the input of those affected. And unlike special committees with student representatives, a union would have the unique capability to consider individual issues in a larger context.

In an attempt to quell support for the union, some members of the Penn administration have resorted to attacking the notion that graduate students qualify as employees in the first place.

"Graduate students are graduate students," was the tautological argument offered by Deputy Provost Peter Conn in an e-mail to graduate students last week. "They are not employees."

It should seem obvious that the two occupations are not mutually exclusive. How it escaped Conn that graduate students are both students and University employees is a mystery.

Graduate students are paid to act as teaching or research assistants to professors in their field. This experience not only provides the University with an important service; it also trains students for future academic posts where they will be full-time employees in similar capacities.

To imply that graduate students teach or do research out of the goodness of their hearts -- with no thought to their financial compensation -- is absurd.

While the concerns of graduate students as Penn students can be addressed by groups such as GAPSA and GSAC, their particular needs as employees of the University can only be addressed through a legally recognized body that gives them leverage in collective bargaining.

And Conn obviously realizes this, or else he wouldn't have sent such an e-mail, acknowledging the threat posed by an empowered group of employees.

If enough union members -- typically two thirds -- are sufficiently dissatisfied with their wages or work conditions, the union can go on strike.

But Conn and Penn's administration need not worry about this, since graduate students aren't real employees who can retract their services when they're exploited.

The deputy provost has tried other dissuasive tactics too.

"We don't believe that the track record of unions with respect to financial gains is impressive," he warned, implying that the graduate students' efforts would be futile.

When a group of employees has no legitimate line of defense against inappropriate employment practices, unionization is not futile. And the fact that other employers historically haven't heeded unions' demands does not mean that Penn can't -- or shouldn't -- negotiate with its employees.

On ground where Yale, Columbia and Brown University graduate students have been less successful, Penn graduate students should not be afraid to tread.

Invoking failures at other universities to dissuade Penn students from asserting their rights is a pretty flimsy argument.

It's time for Penn graduate students to make a bold decision. In the face of abundant discouragement, they must invoke their rights as employees of a major organization and demand a legal body of representation.

Administrators may negotiate issues on an ad hoc basis, but a permanent voice is needed to guarantee the ongoing representation of graduate students' interests in administrative decisions.

Next time, it could cost a lot more than $350.

Lauren Bialystok is a senior Philosophy major from Toronto, Ontario.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.