David Wolach: Fair warning from a colleague

In a few weeks, graduate students at Penn are going to be voting on whether or not to unionize. As a graduate student in the Philosophy Department at Columbia University, I had the opportunity to do the same. Though I am supportive of unionization efforts for a whole host of reasons, I don't want to convince you one way or the other. That decision is yours. Instead, I want to publicly deplore our respective universities for launching divisive anti-union campaigns, for hiring extraordinarily expensive lawyers who are expert in busting unions of all stripes and for crafting rhetorical strategies that are designed to confuse and intimidate voters. To that end, I want to highlight a few of the more egregious tactics used during the Columbia election and in so doing, to warn my colleagues about such possible affronts to democracy at Penn. Friends have told me that at Penn, like at Columbia, the administration has begun to launch an industrial-style anti-union campaign. Such campaigns are typical at most pre-union work sites, from offices to assembly lines. At Columbia, for instance, a law firm was hired immediately to put in place a two-tiered strategy: get employees to vote against unionization, and in case this fails, try to overturn the law by appealing to a Bush-appointed labor board. If Penn has followed suit (as I understand they have), expect the following: 1) Direct correspondence from administrators, usually in the form of e-mails persuading you to vote no. Language will always come dangerously close to intimidation but will be crafted in an ambiguous fashion to avoid legal problems -- e.g. "there could be terrible consequences" instead of "there will be terrible consequences." 2) Bombardment with extremely unlikely scenarios. The best example of this at Penn that I've seen is a flyer that says healthcare costs will "probably" be higher under an employee plan. This is as false as a statement can get without referring to anything. One look at NYU's graduate employee contract will show a provision for full healthcare coverage, a vast improvement over the highly inhibitive university plan previously available to NYU graduate students. 3) Expect the university to pit students against each other. At Columbia, this meant targeting international students by handing out literature suggesting that the union we affiliated with (United Auto Workers) is against international workers because they opposed the expansion of a particular visa program. What they didn't tell international students, and what I found out much later, was that the visa had been opposed by the entire AFL/CIO and most civil rights organizations on the grounds that it didn't grant the same protections to international workers that U.S. citizens enjoy. At Penn, this kind of misinformation might come in some other form, e.g. in pitting departments with higher stipends against those with lower stipends. 4) Expect departmental meetings. Before our vote, the administration instructed all department chairs to have closed meetings with their graduate students in order to persuade them to vote no. Again, this comes dangerously close to intimidation, and because of this, many department chairmen at Columbia were reluctant to do so. 5) Expect a vast and confusing propaganda campaign, such as e-mail "updates," flyers, posters, Web site FAQs, open forum meetings, lunch-ins, even invites to the president's house. This may sound overwhelming, even a bit conspiratorial. However, it all happened at Columbia, Brown and NYU in lesser and greater amounts. And, to tell you the truth, I was skeptical about unionization until such formulaic tactics were employed. The point is this: you deserve a hands-off administration. This is your vote, not theirs. The faculty recognizes this by staying neutral and so should university officials. The academic marketplace should be a place of open exchange, tolerance and perhaps above all, it should be on the forefront of labor advocacy. As a member of the academic community, I am saddened that my university resorted to tactics found at the offices of the most hostile corporations. You have the right to an open and fair election. But be warned: Penn's administration is going to try everything they can to make sure that your voice is stifled. David Wollach is a graduate student at Columbia University.

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