Title
Calling on the University of Pennsylvania to drop its appeal of the National Labor Relations Board's decision regarding Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania, which declared that graduate students who perform teaching and research work for the University are employees, and have the right to vote in a union election to be supervised by the NLRB early in 2003.
Body
WHEREAS, Over two years ago graduate employees at the University of Pennsylvania began organizing themselves to form a union which would provide them with a greater voice in their workplace; and
WHEREAS, The National Labor Relations Board has ruled five times that graduate students at private universities who provide service as teaching and research assistants are employees with the right to organize unions and to bargain collectively; and
WHEREAS, A majority of the graduate employees at the University of Pennsylvania have signed authorization cards indicating their desire to be represented by Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania; and
WHEREAS, The University administration has consistently challenged these employees' right to unionize, and has instead chosen to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of university funds fighting against this right in hearings; and
WHEREAS, An appeal would cost additional hundreds of thousands of dollars, take numerous months, and do little to build a better working relationship between the University and its graduate employees; and
WHEREAS, Within the last thirty years, the number of recognized graduate employee unions nationwide has grown to 23 with 15 other ongoing campaigns due to universities' common practice of exploiting their graduate employees who provide important teaching and research services for compensation and benefits at levels far below those of full time professors; and
WHEREAS, The University of Pennsylvania's graduate employees provide thousands of hours of labor in the form of teaching...
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