Jonathan Shazar: Achieving a noble goal with a union

At least in one sense, it's finally over. After years of sniping, complicated legal maneuvers and, in the end, a vote which may or may not count for anything, the most public -- and what should be the most important -- phase of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania's drive for graduate student unionization at Penn has ended. The ballots have been cast; their fate now rests in the hands of the National Labor Relations Board and almost certainly thereafter the courts. Regardless of whatever interminable legal processes await GET-UP's lawyers and the University General Counsel's office, the results of last week's election are clear -- a victory for the unionization drive, in all likelihood by a fairly substantial margin. If the pledges of support from nearly 500 eligible voters out of a pool of less than 1,000 released last Tuesday were not enough to convince you, this newspaper's exit poll -- which, if anything, undercounts the pro-GET-UP vote -- should erase all doubt. If in the end Penn's appeal fails, as all others to date have, and the democratic process is allowed to move forward, the graduate students in the GET-UP bargaining unit will have a union, as do their peers at New York University. Then what? As an abstract concept, I am not a big fan of graduate student unionization. I reluctantly agree with the Penn administrators who find it abhorrent to the abstract concept of a university. Abstractly, I believe strongly that the teaching and research duties that GET-UP classifies as employment are integral parts of a graduate student's education as a future scholar and teacher, not simply a job. As such, I don't believe it is so easy to separate the graduate student and the graduate employee. But abstractions only go so far. I also believe that a university should not exploit its graduate students for cheap labor. And with all due respect to the thinkers in College Hall, I refuse to believe that the reason the percentage of classes taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty hovers around a mere 50 percent nationwide is anything but economic. I believe that a university ought to provide a stipend on which graduate students can live and work comfortably during their years in Philadelphia. Comparability with its peers is not what Penn should be striving for; quality of life for graduate students is a far more noble goal. Furthermore, I believe that the University is getting its comeuppance. The whole nasty unionization battle could have been avoided long ago had administrators thrown graduate students a bone or two. Instead, Penn nickel-and-dimed them, and now, in a beautiful twist of divine justice, it has blown up in its face. Thus, in the case of graduate student unionization, I am a reluctant pragmatist, but a hopeful one. As such, I must respectfully disagree with Social Work Dean Richard Gelles: a graduate student union would, in the long run, make this a better university. To begin with, the nature of a union is that it improves the living conditions of its members, and this can only be a good thing. Better living conditions attract better graduate students and make those already here happier. It means they don't have to expend so much energy worrying about making rent or providing decent healthcare for their children. Better, happier graduate students make for better, happier teaching assistants, which makes this campus a better place to be for everyone. Of course, such a scenario would inevitably make graduate students more expensive, which leads to a second benefit: if exploiting cheap graduate student labor becomes impossible, maybe the University would be forced to hire more tenure-track faculty members. Penn could -- and, knowing its track record, no doubt would -- search for another cheap teaching source, but an abstractly good university would take the opportunity to expand the ranks of its faculty. This action, on a grander, nationwide scale, would have yet another wonderful consequence -- perhaps the dismal job market for academics would open up a little, giving real opportunity to those future scholars that schools like Penn are so good at training but so bad at hiring. Would a graduate student union at Penn be all flowers and sunshine? Of course not. There may be a strike at some point, and it would probably be justified. Undergraduate tuition may rise, though the University hasn't needed an excuse to charge more in the past. Especially at first, there may be some unfortunate friction, though that may be traced to the nasty campaign both sides have waged. Penn has a whole staff of very fine lawyers, which means that this battle is going to last a long time. That's a shame, because a graduate student union would bring short-term gains for graduate students and long-term gains for the University as a whole. And for that possibility, I'm willing to give GET-UP a shot. Jonathan Shazar is a senior History and Political Science major from Valley Stream, N.Y.

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