A week after roughly 400 graduate students conducted a two-day strike, conditions for Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania have not changed.
Yet while the strike did not create any immediate response from the administration, it did succeed in fostering greater awareness of GET-UP's stance. Furthermore, with this platform now in place, GET-UP members have strengthened their resolve to continue pushing for unionization.
Despite the limited stir that resulted from last Thursday and Friday's actions, strike participants praised last week's efforts for their effectiveness.
GET-UP Chairman David Faris expressed that he "think[s] that's a pretty amazing accomplishment, and I think [what] we demonstrated most of all is that we do have the capability to disrupt the campus.
"As much as the administration plays it down like it wasn't a big deal because we didn't shut down the campus, that doesn't mean that we didn't disrupt the campus in the sense that if we were to do this indefinitely, it would be a big, big problem for them," Faris said.
Some disruption did result from the two-day strike, and GET-UP members said that in the Economics Department alone, over 44 recitation sections were canceled.
In an online petition, GET-UP has received 97 signatures from faculty members in support of having the University drop its appeal. Two-thirds of the signatures came during the week of the strike.
In this way, GET-UP's anniversary action created a broader public platform for GET-UP to stand upon, fostering stronger fervor that could result in a future strike, although no plans have been made.
Last week's protest was held on the one-year anniversary of the election in which close to 1,000 graduate students voted on unionization. The votes have yet to be counted due to an appeal filed by the University with the National Labor Relations Board.
School officials said they were pleased with the respectful manner in which the strike was carried out but that they have no reason to drop the appeal.
"Nothing has changed in terms of the University's positions, and we are committed to provide the opportunity to our graduate students to learn how to teach and to practice so that they can go on and become professors, and we continue to feel that they are in fact students," University Provost Robert Barchi said.
Yet especially following last week's protests, GET-UP members plan to keep their protests in the limelight.
"We do think it's unfortunate that the new [University] president is apparently going to be left without any kind of 'honeymoon period' due to the current administration's stubbornness and will instead be obliged to deal with a no doubt increasingly impatient and frustrated body of employees," GET-UP spokesman Dillon Brown said.
University responses to last week's strike have already produced further frustrations, according to GET-UP members.
In response to news of the strike, the University sent out an e-mail last Monday encouraging faculty and staff to continue work as usual on those two days.
This e-mail resulted in an unfair labor practice charge from the American Federation of Teachers citing the message as evidence violating Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which prohibits an employer from threatening to discipline an employee for observing a strike.
The University later clarified the intentions of its message and denies any implications of a threatening manner.
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