TESTIMONY OF CHRISTINA COLLINS, JOINT PH.D. CANDIDATE THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA BEFORE THE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES AND EDUCATION SEPTEMBER 23, 2004
Good morning Chairman Specter, Ranking Member Harkin and members of the subcommittee.
My name is Tina Collins, and I am a sixth-year doctoral candidate pursuing a joint Ph.D. in history and education at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). During my first five years at Penn, I was employed by the university as a research and teaching assistant, working in both the Graduate School of Education and the History Department, and teaching undergraduate and graduate students. I am also a member of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP/AFT), a union organizing campaign seeking to represent nearly 1,000 graduate-level teaching and research assistants employed at Penn. GET-UP is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) July decision in Brown University, 342 NLRB No. 42 (2004) (Brown). This overruled recent NLRB precedent and stripped graduate employees at private universities of protection under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The board stated in Brown that graduate teaching and research assistants are not “employees” under the act, and therefore have no right to form a union and bargain collectively. Previously, the board ruled in New York University, 332 NLRB No. 1205 (2000) (NYU) that graduate assistants in private universities were employees and constitute an appropriate unit for collective bargaining.
My fellow graduate assistants and I were encouraged by the earlier NYU decision given the many similarities between our experiences and the circumstances facing the employees at NYU. The decision led a group of us to begin meeting to talk about what could be done about the many issues affecting our ability to perform our duties as graduate assistants at the university. We quickly confirmed that organizing graduate employees at universities is not unique or radical. We looked to the three decades of collective-bargaining experiences of graduate employees at some of the most prestigious public universities in the United States as a model for what we might accomplish. Graduate teachers and researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Michigan, the University of California system, Michigan State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have fought for and won union recognition and the right to bargain contracts with their respective administrations. The Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA/AFT) has been negotiating with the University of Wisconsin at Madison since 1969 over a wide range of issues including compensation and benefits packages, grievance procedures and job training. The university has suffered no ill effects as a result of graduate unionization. In fact, today the school is nationally recognized as one of the country’s premier research institutions. Its own Web site points out that the university is known for its “world-class, cutting-edge research.”
Rather than offer my analysis on the legal complexities of this recent Brown decision, I would instead like to talk about what graduate assistants do as Penn employees and demonstrate the integral role we play as part of our institutions’ instructional workforce. I am convinced these experiences would lead a reasonable person to recognize our status as employees who have the right to form unions that represent our interests in the workplace.
My own first year of teaching in the History Department provides a few typical examples of the extensive and essential work graduate employees provide at Penn. I was told I would be teaching a class in Latin American history, even though I had never taken a graduate course in that field, because two teaching assistants were needed and no one else was available; the other teaching assistant was working on a degree in European intellectual history. I was not given training, office space, a phone line or a computer. Consequently, I, like any other teacher at the university, had to prepare to teach my class, developing my teaching strategies and establishing a schedule not only for my students but also for myself. Each week, I spent approximately 20 hours working for the university. I met with the professor and the other teaching assistant before the course began and then for about an hour a week to discuss the readings for the class, the assignments and to ensure that our grading criteria were consistent. I attended the professor’s lectures twice a week, taking notes and helping with the audio/visual material she used in her presentations. I completed all the readings for the class, as well as reviewing other background materials and multi-media sources, including several films. I prepared lesson plans for my two classes, which included about 30 students and met once a week; during lessons I led discussion of the material, answered students’ questions and assisted them in refining arguments in their written assignments.
I also held weekly office hours for students. Because teaching assistants at Penn do not have offices, these meetings usually were held in coffee shops or other public spaces. I was also available to students by e-mail and phone, during the week and on evenings and weekends (especially before big papers were due). I was expected to pay all of my own expenses for Internet access at home because the university had discontinued its off-campus access system the previous year. Students asked me for advice on completing coursework and sent me drafts of papers for comments on style and content, as well as turning to me for more general support regarding adjustment to life at the university. Over the course of the semester, I was responsible for grading three essay papers from each student on a wide variety of topics. I also was responsible for grading both a midterm exam and a final exam, each of which included short-answer as well as essay questions. I was also responsible for calculating and submitting students’ final grades at the end of the semester. In addition to my duties for this class, I was completing my own academic work for four graduate classes, giving presentations at several conferences around the country and working on a journal article with two colleagues.
What I have just outlined is not unusual. In addition to teaching their own classes, graduate employees at Penn lead small group discussions and lab classes that complement the larger lecture classes typically taught by faculty. This semester, 87 percent of the teaching hours in large lecture classes in the History Department will be conducted by graduate employees. In the English Department, where large lecture classes are not the norm, graduate-level teachers will teach 40 percent of the introductory level seminars this semester. The tendency to rely heavily on graduate assistants to work with students in smaller groups, while also teaching their own classes, is increasing throughout the School of Arts and Sciences.
Former Penn President Judith Rodin recognized the valuable work performed by graduate assistants when she established the Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students. The prize seeks to recognize “excellence in teaching by graduate students across the university who, through their dedication to teaching have had a profound impact on undergraduate education at Penn.” Yet, for all of these contributions and this high praise, most teaching and research assistants in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences this year will receive a standard stipend of $15,750. In addition, hundreds of graduate employees in schools such as Education, Social Work and Design typically receive much less than $15,750. Even more troubling, more experienced teaching assistants at Penn actually now receive less for doing the same work as newer employees.
Compensation is a significant issue to our members, especially those non-traditional students with family responsibilities or international students with few other employment options. For the past several months, GET-UP has been surveying graduate employees from across Penn regarding their current quality of life and issues they would like to see addressed in a future contract. What we have learned from our colleagues is instructive. The average monthly rent for those surveyed is $671, which amounts to an average of $8,052 per year. So, the average cost of rent alone is more than half of the standard annual stipend in the School of Arts and Sciences. Overall, 56 percent of those surveyed said that the funds they receive from the university are not sufficient to cover their day-to-day living expenses.
Health insurance is also a major concern for our members. Although the departments that make up the School of Arts and Sciences began paying health insurance premiums for their graduate employees soon after our union campaign began, most graduate employees in the Schools of Design, Social Work and Education are still expected to pay the premium out of their stipends. The premium has increased every year I’ve been at Penn. For 2004-05, the annual rate is $2,072, a 10 percent increase from last year. For graduate employees with two dependents, the premium cost jumps to $8,207–and has the potential to price someone out of graduate school. One recent Ph.D. recipient had to make the choice in his last year of study between adding his wife or their infant son to the health insurance plan, because he could not afford to pay for both. Ultimately, his wife went without healthcare until he graduated and took a job in the private sector. This is a choice we should not be confronted with at an institution as wealthy as Penn. Even if graduate employees with children are able to pay these high premiums, the only primary care provider fully covered under the plan is the student health clinic, which does not have a pediatrician on staff.
There are also high co-pays, deductibles and prescription costs that often put care out of reach for graduate students, and can even affect treatment. One of my colleagues recently met with a doctor who suggested a test to better determine a course of action for his ailment. However, my colleague couldn’t afford the $100 out-of-pocket expense. The doctor then just went ahead with a treatment, unsure of whether it would be effective.
For many graduate employees--especially those of limited means or those with families--growing inequities in compensation and benefits packages may limit their ability to pursue graduate studies.
It was these types of examples that led us to eventually reach agreement on the need to establish a formalized vehicle to represent our interests and needs before the administration at Penn. Armed with the new status afforded to us by the NYU decision, we decided to form GET-UP in Fall of 2000. Our goal was simple: We sought the right to bargain a contract with the university that would serve the interests of our members and improve both working and learning conditions at Penn. We affiliated with the AFT later that academic year, and have been working ever since to gain recognition.
Throughout this period, we have faithfully followed the rules set forth under the NLRA as interpreted by the NLRB. Unfortunately, Penn failed to display that same level of commitment--In 2001, a substantial majority of graduate employees signed authorization cards asking Penn to recognize GET-UP as their union and begin bargaining; Penn refused this request. After another year of waiting, our case was finally heard; the regional labor relations board ruled in our favor and called for an election to be held In February 2003. According to a survey performed by the Daily Pennsylvanian, we won that election 62 percent to 38 percent, despite an intense anti-union campaign by the university. However, our votes were never counted because the university continued to reject our right to unionize. Despite four years of hard work by GET-UP members--who struggled to balance their academic, employment and personal responsibilities with their efforts to gain a voice at work--the NLRB overruled the previous NYU decision, ruling that graduate teaching and research assistants are not employees eligible to form unions under the NLRA. Our petition for recognition was subsequently dismissed in August 2004.
I believe that the most recent NLRB decision represents a significant misinterpretation of the NLRA. Graduate teaching and research assistants in the private sector, like the more than 40,000 graduate employees who participate in collective bargaining at public universities, are clearly employees providing valuable services at our institutions in exchange for compensation. Without our work, institutions like Penn would need to hire other employees to do fill these jobs.
We continue to organize graduate employees on campus and to highlight the necessity of advocating for our interests. However, our challenge has been increased by the recent NLRB decision.
GET-UP and its members find the argument that graduate employees have no right to or need for a union to be absolutely unfounded and unacceptable in a democratic country. Our work is essential to the university’s mission, and we are proud of the high-quality research and teaching that our members perform, even under the often difficult conditions I’ve just described. We, and the other union organizing campaigns affected by the Brown decision, are committed to using our collective voice as employees to make our institutions better places in which to work and to learn.
On behalf of my graduate colleagues at Penn, I thank you for taking the time today to examine the impact of the recent NLRB decision on graduate employees. I hope that you and your colleagues in Congress will consider introducing and pushing legislation that explicitly protects the basic right of these employees to form unions at private colleges and universities under the protections of the NLRA. Doing so will send a strong message that graduate assistants are an essential part of undergraduate education programs not just at Penn but at other private colleges and universities across the nation.
I welcome any questions that members of the committee may have in regard to my testimony.
