Stephen Preston: The University's fight against democracy

Happy Election Day!

I hope you have either voted already or are about to vote. I'm sure you've heard many people by now telling you why you should participate in the electoral process.

Unfortunately, college students don't participate nearly enough. Paradoxically, students would probably be the first in the streets to protest if their right to vote were taken away.

But for some students, this right has already been denied. Graduate teaching assistants, who have been trying to exercise their right to vote on unionization for two years, are being obstructed by the University administration, which refuses to accept that American labor law -- the right to vote to join a union -- applies to Penn graduate students. This, despite the fact that the National Labor Relations Board decided that it applies to grads at other private universities, like New York University, Brown and Columbia.

Penn is now in the position of being more hostile to labor than the Bush Administration. So much for liberalism in the ivory tower.

Penn and the other private universities, which are now spending millions of dollars to fight unionization, have only themselves to blame for the recent drives. Over the past decade, many universities have started running themselves like businesses, and Penn has been prototypical. University President Judith Rodin describes herself as a CEO, and Penn was singled out by the Chronicle of Higher Education as an example of the "bottom-line" approach to the university.

In the May 10, 2002, issue of The Daily Pennsylvanian, Deputy Provost Peter Conn expressed Penn's position that unions "create division between members of the community and thus impinge on collegiality." ("Columbia TAs go on strike")

But the unionization drive is not a cause of division. It is a response to it. In a 1999 interview with the Chronicle, then-Executive Vice President John Fry said it was healthy that Penn employees were "taking less for granted in terms of their employment status." In an environment where the employers take a hostile attitude toward their employees, as in the notorious firing of the Faculty Club staff, it should be no surprise that employees occasionally fight back.

According to Michael Janson, an organizer for Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, one of the primary motivations for the unionization drive is benefits. Graduate students are currently forced to pay $1,677 annually for health insurance. They have a choice of two plans: one provided by Aetna, the other provided by -- Aetna.

Aetna, you will recall, pays President Rodin over $60,000 annually for service on its board of directors. This is just a coincidence. Please don't read anything into it, and let's just forget I said it.

Until last year, premiums had been increasing while services had been decreasing. According to a DP article from March 29, 2002, however, the most recent change has seen services improved, with a mostly positive reaction from graduate students. ("Graduate student leaders support new health insurance plan")

It seems evident that in a bottom-line university like ours, the improvements came only because the administration felt threatened by the unionization drive. So even without a vote, the union campaign has already had a positive effect. But improvements won't continue without a union to push for and defend them.

Of course, having a union by itself will not necessarily improve the situation of graduate employees. At the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where I attended graduate school, the employees achieved unionization in 1992, after a long and bitter struggle with the state. But once the union was created, many people stopped paying attention to its activities.

As a result, the union bankrupted itself in 1997 and was taken over by its parent. Political infighting followed and continues today, distracting the union from the fundamental work of negotiating and enforcing the contract.

Ramon del Castillo, a friend of mine who has been involved with the SUNY Graduate Student Employees Union for years, warns that the most important concern for students trying to form a union is to stay with it once it's created and not let it get diverted from basic activities.

But these issues can be dealt with later. The most important thing is to give teaching assistants the opportunity to vote on the union in the first place.

Cornell, like Penn, opposed the unionization of its graduate students. But instead of fighting them in court, Cornell let the ballots decide. Its students ended up agreeing with the university and voting down the union.

Penn should follow Cornell and drop its legal battle against GET-UP. Its hostile approach to students' legitimate economic concerns is the real obstacle to a "collegial environment" on campus.

The Penn administration should learn that it will get along best with graduate employees, unionized or not, when it respects the democratic process.

Stephen Preston is a lecturer in Mathematics.

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