Graduate employee activists who are in the midst of a union membership drive at Pennsylvania State University got a boost when AFT president Sandra Feldman met with them on March 25 and lauded their efforts at an afternoon rally. "We are committed to making things better at Penn State," she told members of the Graduate and Fixed-Term Employee Organization, "but to do that the university has to recognize the rights and dignity of graduate employees!"

A week earlier, the university had announced that it would begin providing the same healthcare coverage to the graduate assistants and their families as it provides to faculty and staff. This breakthrough is widely viewed by campus stakeholders to be a result of GFTEO pressure, and Feldman noted that in her remarks. However, the university also has to address other aspects of the employees' working conditions, she said, such as their access to offices, phones, reasonable workloads--and a voice in academic affairs.

Feldman was on the campus to deliver the Philip Murray Memorial Labor Lecture, co-sponsored by the Penn State Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations, and the United Steelworkers of America. The lecture is named for the first president of the steelworkers union.

The AFT president's lecture focused on the future of the American labor movement and on the plight of the growing number of contingent workers in all industries--but especially in higher education. Hearing some of the personal stories of Penn State graduate assistants "angered and appalled" Feldman. "When this great university nickels and dimes its part-time instructors and researchers, it is also shortchanging its students," she charged.

"This is dead wrong. We in the AFT will fight to make it right," she promised.

As pleased as the GFTEO is with the university's plans to provide health benefits, the organization is not sure of the details and would have preferred to be included at the table discussing the plan. The organization will be using the offer as both a sign of the power of people coming together and the reason why all of their fellow teachers must gear up for a card campaign and more organizing next semester.

The graduate employees at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate Employees Together-UP/AFT, have finished hearings before the National Labor Relations Board on the composition of their unit. GET-UP is awaiting an NLRB ruling and preparing for a fall election.

The Temple University Graduate Students Association/AFT has just reached an agreement on its first contract as this issue of AFT On Campus went to press. For more details go to www.tugsa.org. [Barbara McKenna / AFT On Campus]

[May 21, 2002]