Staff Editorial: Let's get ready to rumble

Yesterday, Penn's battle against a graduate student union took a critical turn.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled, to nearly no one's surprise, that a portion of the University's graduate students can, in fact, decide for themselves whether or not a union is the way to go on this campus. And that is a victory for all involved.

Both sides of the debate can now sit down and discuss what really matters -- not whether a union is legal, but whether a union would improve life for graduate students.

And that is what this battle always ought to have been about all along. There are strong arguments on both sides, and now those arguments can be heard and judged on their merits by the only community that matters -- not the NLRB, not the Board of Trustees, but the graduate students whom a union would effect.

The University can, of course, appeal, but it would be advised not to. The NLRB's decision yesterday is not precedent setting, but rather follows the logic that have allowed union elections to go forward at Brown, Columbia and New York universities, where pro-union forces prevailed, and at Cornell University, where graduate students rejected collective bargaining. An appeal would only waste more money that could be better spent on academic programs, Bennett Hall renovations or making the case against a union.

Legal maneurvering can only go so far. Barring a dramatic reversal, Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania would eventually have won the right to hold an election, no matter how much energy and committment the General Counsel's office poured into the effort.

The time has come to stop hiding from the bread and butter issues of graduate unionization -- will a union improve their lives and their treatment from above? We expect a spirited, civil debate and an eventual decision based on the facts.

It should be an interesting few months.

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