GET-UP, supporters to strike today

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania members, along with their supporters, will begin a two-day strike today.

The strike was voted on by an 83 percent majority in Monday night's GET-UP members-only meeting.

An estimated 400 picketers will be out between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. today and tomorrow, and have been asked by organizers to sign up for three different three-hour shifts between the two days.

GET-UP leaders have said that they have informed the necessary police authorities as to their actions and expect no legal repercussions to occur from the strike. Strike organizers continued by saying that those out in protest will form a "porous picket line" and that they intend to allow individuals to cross.

"I expect we'll be a visible presence on campus," GET-UP spokesman Dillon Brown said. "We certainly hope to raise awareness."

Picketers will report to the Benjamin Franklin statue located in front of College Hall and from there expect to spread out to six visible entrances across campus.

Participants have been asked in an e-mail to "walk in a circle at their sites and have minimal contact with" passers-by.

Picketers will be out in protest of the University's legal actions that have caused votes from last February's National Labor Relations Board-sponsored unionization election to remain uncounted.

The University's position is that graduate students are not employees and therefore do not have the right to form a union. Those involved with GET-UP want to unionize in order to negotiate enhanced pay, health benefits and teacher training.

"I think there should be a union," fifth-year Psychology doctoral candidate Stacey Schaefer said. "The University has been holding the process back, and if they're not going to do anything to foster change, then eventually action must be taken."

In e-mails sent out to faculty and students, Penn officials have stated that the University will remain open and operational today and tomorrow.

"We've been in communication with our deans and asked them to be in communication with all the faculty and students simply to reinforce the fact that for us, the educational mission is primary and that our commitment is to the education of our undergraduate students," University Provost Robert Barchi said.

"And we will follow through with that commitment in the face of any activity on Thursday and Friday, and secondly to make sure that our students understand that they will not be put in any way in any kind of a compromised situation by continuing to avail themselves of their educational opportunities," he added.

GET-UP members have said that this is not an academic strike.

"This is simply a withdrawal of TA ... labor," said GET-UP Mass Action Committee Chairman Joe Drury.

"We're saying that if you don't think we do work on this campus, you'll notice when we're not doing it," Drury said.

Administrators, however, point out that GET-UP represents a minority of the graduate students on campus.

This "is roughly 220 or 230 students out of 3,650 Ph.D. students here at Penn, and one of our issues all along has been that this group is simply not representative of all the Ph.D. students here at Penn," Barchi said.

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