GET-UP will present to U.S. Senate committee

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania -- the University's would-be graduate student union -- will testify before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Sept. 23.

Representatives from the University and the National Labor Relations Board were also invited to testify in Washington, D.C.

GET-UP was asked to speak at an informational hearing by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who serves on the arbitration committee and is chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services Education subcommittee.

Tina Collins, GET-UP's political spokeswoman and a joint History and Graduate School of Education doctoral candidate, will address the committee at the public hearing for approximately five to 10 minutes.

"Having been both a teaching assistant and research assistant, I plan on talking about my experience and the experience of other people in GET-UP," Collins said, adding that she will "give a sense of [graduate] employment circumstances, give a history of the campaign and the long, long legal process with the University."

The Senate Appropriations Committee allocates funds from the Federal Treasury. Penn is allocated public funding by the committee.

GET-UP sees the invitation to speak as a sign that its cause is garnering national support.

"The national level is recognizing that the situation we are in is contradictory to a lot of things that people feel labor and workers represent in this country," Collins said.

The issue of graduate student unions came to national attention when the NLRB ruled this past summer that Brown University's graduate-level teaching and research assistants are students and do not have the right to unionize under the umbrella protection of the NLRB. A similar, regional ruling quickly followed regarding Penn.

This decision overturned the 2000 New York University ruling, which determined that teaching and research assistants have the right to unionize.

Collins stressed that the goal of the hearing is to point out the consequences of refusing to recognize unions at Penn and across the U.S.

Collins hopes that this will "continue to raise awareness" across campus and "send a message to Dr. Gutmann and the new administration that we are still really committed to this."

Specter has also invited representatives from the University and the NLRB to speak.

John Langel of Ballard, Spahr, Andrews, and Ingersoll -- the law firm that represented Penn in the NLRB case -- will represent the University.

The NLRB could not be reached for comment about whether a representative would be attending.

Despite GET-UP's excitement about the hearing, Specter's press secretary, Charles Robbins, cautioned that this is merely a "fact-finding hearing" and said that it is "premature" for Specter to give his opinion on the NLRB ruling.

Specter, however, has been a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act. Under the legislation, workers would be able to establish a union in their workplace through a voting or majority verification process.

This bipartisan act has also been sponsored by Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards, respectively.

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