Talk:Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania

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Contents 1 Header 2 This page, generally 3 Less propaganda in numbers 4 New criticism section

[edit] Header

I deleted the phrase "nor is it sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board as an official union" from the header because the NLRB doesn't "sanction" unions. The NLRB, when petitioned by employees, will "certify" a collective bargaining agent after a "representation election." Afterwards, the employer (and the union) have legal obligation to bargain in good faith. This process is, however, not necessary for collective bargaining. A union and an employer can reach a contract without any involvement of the NLRB; the NLRB only has to come in when the employer refuses to deal with the union. So, it isn't right to say that GET-UP isn't "sanctioned" by the NLRB, since this could never happen, and since the key point of this sentence - that the university has not recognized the union for the purposes of collective bargaining - does not rely upon any NLRB action or "sanctioning." The university could recognize GET-UP any day. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.197.191.8 (talk)

Thanks for the clarification. The overall tone of the article paints the university in a poor light here, with NLRB perpetually on the verge of stepping in to force them to recognize GET-UP. But really, NLRB has apparently explicitly decided not to do certify, which is very different. Does lead need to mention NLRB non-certification to keep the article even-handed? DMacks 04:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. The vast majority of labor relations in the US take place without any input from the NLRB. It is the last resort for employees in the private sector who have an employer that won't recognize their right to form a union, or committs unfair labor practices against the employees (i.e. threats, etc.). The NLRB decision, and this is a key point, does not prevent recognition of the union, it just says that recognition won't be enforced by the federal government. The decision to recognize and bargain, as always, remains with the employer. I'm not sure I fully understand the comment about portraying the university in poor light. Could you elaborate? The university has waged a 6 year campaign against the union. The NLRB ordered one election that resulted in the union winning election. The university appealed the decision, and was able to get out of recognizing the union because of a new decision by the Bush-NLRB. These two decisions are important to the story, but the basic issue has been the university's continous refusal to recognize the right of the employees to bargain, independent of what the NLRB says, for six years. That's the facts. I'm not sure how to say that in a less negative sounding way. As an aside, the university's PR dept. has often tried to tell the story as one just about NLRB decisions, rather than the university's own decisions. Perhaps that sheds light on how this needs to be framed.

[edit] This page, generally

This page has no business being up on Wikipedia. It is essentially a propoganda page for GET-UP.

The issue of grad employee unionization in the US has been major news in the last six years, with many stories appearing in the national news. Closer to home, GET-UP has been associated with tens if not hundreds of Daily Pennsylvanian articles. A GET-UP member was called to testify before the US senate appropriations committee regarding the NLRB Brown decision. I think it's fairly obvious that this page has business on Wikipedia. Now as for whether it's a propaganda page I challenge you to find a place where the page either advocates for a union or distorts the facts. Why you chose to delete information (such as that there were six picket points) I don't understand. I will revert the page and add a line about how undergraduates (like faculty and graduate students) were divided as to opinion. Feel free to add to this page to improve it, but please don't delete things needlessly. Also, please sign your posts on talk pages. Thanks, Flying fish 00:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Less propaganda in numbers

I just adjusted the "anniversary strike" section to indicate that the meeting and strongly-supporting vote were of GET-UP. Otherwise it could appear to be of some other graduate student group (GSAC, GAPSA, whatever). Actually, is/was GET-UP itself striving to represent all graduate students, or only some departments/divisions/schools? In general, lots of numbers are used without indicating their relative value, which makes it sound much more propaganda-like (trying to wow with large values). Is "hundreds of graduate students" almost all graduate students or almost all of the ones that would be represented or really only a small percentage? Does 97 profs indicate that most of the faculty supports, or is that number a tiny percentage? 70.17.239.177 07:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

This page does not mention the intense opposition that GET-UP faces from undergraduates and many faculty members. It is clearly a propaganda page for GET-UP and should be deleted immediately.

--Niremetal 02:07, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

That is totally BS. If you want to put in a section about 'controversy' and document it with citations, then fine. But you can't say a page that doesn't contain detailed descriptions of those that oppose it is 'propaganda.' The other union web pages on Wiki do not contain such remarks and they are not labeled as 'propaganda' (i.e. SEIU, AFT, AFSCME). Nor do the pages on universities contain large sections on those that 'oppose' them (i.e. U-Penn, Columbia, Harvard). Thus, I am deleting the 'propaganda' label.

This discussion was settled a long time ago on this page when the same user previously tried to label it propaganda in December, 2005. If you want to actually think about this issue, rather than just taking cheap shots at unions, consider the Wiki entry on propaganda. June 17, 2006.

[edit] New criticism section

To address the propaganda issue: I added a criticism section that I feel is fairly comprehensive. Everything is fully cited, and I believe that it is fair. March 5, 2007.

GET-UP represents a relatively small sample of the graduate student population. Many graduate students have no desire to unionize [10][11], and the two official graduate student government groups do not support GET-UP[12].

The article says "Strike not supported by all graduate student", not "most". Further, two of the articles you linked to stated explicity that GSAC and GAPSA passed motions declayring neutrality to the unionization movement (a fact which is already in the article).

The initial petition to unionize was confusing and misleading, causing students to sign who did not fully understand GET-UP's position[13].

The article you linked to is about the "vote yes" petition, not the original union petition.

Increasing graduates' stipends and benefits would take away resources from undergraduate students, who are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend Penn.

There is no evidence for this. The endowment grew by almost a billion dollars last year - wage increases for 1000 grad employees won't come close to denting that.

GET-UP distributed critical pamphlets to visiting prospective undergraduates, a tactic with no forseeable benefit but with a possibly very detrimental effect on the University as a whole[17].

The expected benefits of the tactic are mentioned in the article you link to. Anyway, one could claim that the University's not recognizing GET-UP leads to detrimental effects on the University as a whole - but one shouldn't put such a claim in the wikipedia.

The organization emphasizes in published material how many undergraduate classes are not taught by professors, but neglects to note that lecturers largely make up the remainder of instructors, not graduate students[18].

It would be good if someone could find a copy of the report to link to. I can't recall for sure, but I seem to remember that the stats were broken down showing how many were taught by adjuncts and how many by grad students. Whichever way it is, it would be much better to link to evidence rather than an opinion piece.

GET-UP protests at former President Judith Rodin's farewell and President Amy Gutmann's subsequent inauguration were unnecessarily disruptive towards a part of the University community that has little to do with graduate labor relations[19].

"unneccessarily disruptive" is POV. They didn't get kicked out or anything, they weren't even inside the event, so I think that's a little over the top. Flying fish 01:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)