Founded 2001 Country United States | Affiliation AFT | |
Full name Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania | ||
Graduate Employees Together – University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP) was a group of graduate student employees at the University of Pennsylvania that was trying to become recognized as a union. The group formed in the spring of 2001, and affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. The group has not been recognized by the University as a union for the purposes of collective bargaining.
Contents
Prehistory
While graduate employee unions are commonplace outside of the United States they exist at less than half of American public universities, and there has been only one recognized union at a private American university. The first graduate employee union in the USA was formed in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison when the Teaching Assistants Association won recognition and its first contract. Between 1970 and 2000 graduate employees organized many unions at public universities, and today an estimated 20% of graduate employees in the US work under a collective bargaining agreement. Graduate employee unions did not exist at private universities until October 2000, when the NLRB ruled in the landmark case of GSOC at New York University (NYU) that graduate employees at private universities are to be considered employees according to the definition put forth in the National Labor Relations Act.
GET-UP Certification Campaign
A flurry of student initiated organizing activity took place at private universities in the wake of the 2000 NLRB decision. By the end of 2001 there were active recognition campaigns taking place at many Ivy League schools, including UPenn. The Penn campaign started when a diverse group of graduate students began meeting in the fall of 2000 to discuss concerns related to their employment status. A group formed at UPenn and chose the name GET-UP. A vote was taken by the students and the decision was made to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. The new union began a certification card drive, and on December 27, 2001 GET-UP filed a petition to the NLRB for a union authorization election. A certification election was scheduled for February 26, 2003; however, the National Labor Relations Board overturned the decision to allow graduate students to unionize before the votes could be counted.
GET-UP Authorization Election
The November 2002 decision by the NLRB allowed for an election to take place in early 2003. However, an appeal was filed in regards to the NLRB decision and the votes were sealed and left uncounted until a ruling could be reached. The NLRB decided to overturn the decision in 2004.
Election Anniversary Strike
After a year of increasing pressure from GET-UP and its allies failed to convince the University to drop its appeal and allow the NLRB to count the ballots cast in the certification election the union members felt that a significant action was necessary to move the process forward. At the Spring 2004 GET-Up general membership meeting, after a half-hour debate, an 83 percent majority voted to withdraw their labor on the two days of the election's anniversary. The plan was not for a full academic strike, as GET-UP did not ask professors to cancel classes or for undergrads not to attend. Rather, the membership approved of the limited strike as a way of demonstrating their seriousness while still giving the University a chance to drop its appeal and negotiate. There was debate among undergrads, grad students, grad employees, and faculty about whether the limited strike was a good tactic or not, with people from all four groups both for and against the strike.
2004 NLRB National Board Decision
At the start of the fall semester of 2004 the National Labor Relations Board announced a complete reversal of its 2000 decision in the case of NYU in a 3-2 decision regarding graduate employees at Brown University. The Republican controlled board stated in their decision that "there is a significant risk, even a strong likelihood, that the collective-bargaining process will be detrimental to the educational process." The dissenting opinion stated that "Today's decision is woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality", and further that "It disregards the plain language of" Section 2(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, which "defines employees so broadly that graduate students who perform services for, and under the control of, their universities are easily covered". With the new board's decision a regional board of the NLRB ruled that the decision also applied in Penn's case. As a result the votes cast in the 2004 election will never be counted and unfair labor practice charges were also dropped, as graduate employees at private Universities are no longer protected employees under the National Labor Relations Act.
Criticism of GET-UP
As is usual during a unionization drive there is not unanimous approval or disapproval, neither among graduate employees, graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, nor staff. Some specific criticisms that opponents have levied are as follows:
Leadership
Graduate employees from many different fields have filled leadership roles in GET-UP. In the past few years chairs and co-chairs have been drawn from the History, Education, Linguistics, Comparative Literature, English, and Political Science departments. Leadership has been diverse both in terms of the fields from which it has been drawn from as well as in terms of gender and international student representation. Four of the six currently elected officers are female.