Let Penn State Grad Students Decide on Whether to Form a Union

My latest piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Penn State's decision to enlist its faculty in resisting their graduate employees' efforts to unionize. Spoiler alert: I'm not with the administration on this one.



By Lane Windham


A directive on how to fight graduate employees’ unionization efforts was the last thing I expected Penn State University’s Graduate School to plop in my email in-box on Friday morning. Yet there it was. Under the heading of “Guidance for faculty and other supervisors of graduate student assistants,” the document clearly seeks to enlist faculty and staff in its resistance to graduate employees’ burgeoning union campaign at State College.

The Coalition of Graduate Employees at Penn State launched a union organizing drive in February, gathering on the steps of Old Main to sign union cards one chilly morning to assert their basic freedom to form a union. There are 3,500 such graduate employees who work as research and teaching assistants, helping the work of the state’s flagship university campus hum along. They grade the papers, teach the discussion groups and staff the research labs that turn out the university’s cutting-edge research.

Yet these workers receive stipends that do not cover basic living expenses and have suffered recent cutbacks in their health care coverage. They say they do not feel respected by the university and would like to have an independent voice, and so are gathering union cards in an effort to trigger a union election under the Pennsylvania Public Employee Relations Act.

Many people will agree with these graduate employees’ choice. Others may not. Yet everyone should respect their freedom to make their own choice on a union. Everyone except Penn State, it seems.

I’m a post-doctoral scholar at Penn State, and the graduate school’s “guidance” document contains the same kind of boilerplate, union-busting language I routinely see in my historical research on anti-union companies and law firms in the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, Penn State follows the typical “managing to stay nonunion” script verbatim.

The memo assures faculty members that they are free to “explain some of the known aspects of belonging to a union” such as strikes, dues and initiation fees. It encourages faculty to “inform” graduate employees that “the university does not have to honor their current arrangements” if the employees form a union. Union-avoidance lawyers typically call this bargaining from scratch. The administration urges faculty to tell graduate employees about “the competitive nature” of their stipends and benefits, and to tout the benefits they presently “enjoy.”

Of course, Penn State lawyers have made sure the university covered the legal bases. My “guidance” email makes clear that faculty should not threaten, interrogate, make promises or conduct surveillance, as these actions are illegal. Yet it also urges faculty to explain to graduate assistants “what would change with unionization versus the current state, such as currently being able to work directly with faculty mentors regarding scheduling and other matters … ” If you heard that from your faculty adviser, wouldn’t you see this as a veiled threat?

Many Penn State faculty members and staff support employees’ freedom to make their own choice on unionization, and these faculty members now have a decision to make. What will they do in reaction to the administration’s directive on graduate student unionization?

Penn State graduate employees are not alone in their efforts to form a union. Graduate employees at Temple University have a union, as do those at six of the 14 schools in the Big Ten. Thirty-two universities nationwide have graduate-employee unions. Graduate employees in many states are organizing because they know that with a collective bargaining agreement they will earn more and have a greater say in their working conditions.

Penn State alumni, parents, faculty, staff and students should urge the administration to remain neutral on graduate employees’ efforts to form a union. The university does not need to support the graduate employees’ efforts, but neither should it put up a fight. Any administration claim that it was simply trying to “inform” its faculty about the union is disingenuous, given the cookie cutter, anti-union language of its “guidance” letter. The administration might have offered faculty real advice on how to stay neutral on the union question; instead, Penn State chose the low road.

Lane Windham is a post-doctoral scholar with Penn State’s Center for Global Workers’ Rights in the School of Labor and Employment Relations. Her forthcoming book, “Knocking on Labor’s Door,” is due out from UNC Press in 2017.