This spring, we have been inspired by the growth of union organizing at Penn. Resident advisors who work in the dorms filed for a union election in March; graduate research assistants and teaching assistants in GET-UP went public with their organizing drive in April; and residents at Penn Medicine won their union election in May. Meanwhile, Penn Museum Workers United is pushing ahead with their campaign to win a first contract.

The university administration has launched anti-union campaigns in response to all these mobilizations and is now trying to enlist faculty in anti-union activity.  Just last week, all standing faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences received an email from administrators directing us to websites that present anti-union talking points for us to pass along to graduate student workers.  It is wrong for the administration to attempt to make us conduits for anti-union messages. Moreover, it is wrong for the administration to run anti-union campaigns at all.

Our Response

This week we delivered a letter to administrators calling on them to take down all anti-union websites and end the anti-union campaigns. We hope you’ll read and share it.

Together over the next several months, we will work to educate colleagues about anti-union campaigns to make sure that we do not pass along anti-union messages. As many of us know, anti-union campaigns can be subtle: employers present their communications as purportedly neutral answers to frequently asked questions.  As a result, even faculty who support unions might not immediately recognize these websites for what they are.  

To educate ourselves and our colleagues, we have created an annotated version of the Provost’s guidance to faculty. Please read it, share it with colleagues, and stay tuned for upcoming information sessions and opportunities to get involved. 

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Our friends and colleagues in Penn Museum Workers United (AFSCME DC47 Local 397) are currently negotiating their first contract. They have waited long enough to do so (having organized in May 2021 and endured a relentless anti-union campaign), and there is a lot at stake: above all, wages that would allow them to live in dignity in Philadelphia. A third of PMWU members earn between $15.75 and $20 per hour; they are underpaid compared with their counterparts at other museums, as well as with Penn library workers who perform similar types of work and with Penn housekeeping workers in Teamsters Local 115. If the Museum can afford to spend $100 million on capital projects, it seems clear that it can also afford to pay its workers fairly. In fact, we believe that it can’t afford not to do so. It is in the interest of the institution to retain talented staff and prevent the high rates of turnover and instability that currently result from inadequate pay.

On June 4th, AAUP–Penn’s Executive Committee sent a letter to Penn President Liz Magill, Penn Museum Director Chris Woods, and Penn Museum Chief Operating Officer Genny Boccardo-Dubey calling on Museum management to accept the reasonable wage proposals of our colleagues in PMWU. You can read our letter below.

We stand in solidarity with Penn Museum workers, and we are committed to seeing that the University and the Museum meet their demands and negotiate a fair contract.

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Penn housekeepers, grounds workers, and transportation workers in Teamsters Local 115 are celebrating a hard-fought contract victory. A campaign led by rank-and-file members won an end to the inequitable two-tier wage system that pays different hourly rates for the same work. Their new contract will phase out two-tier pay over a 5-year period, with annual raises between 3.5–4% putting all housekeepers on a progression to the top-level wage ($28.68/hr) by 2026.

This is a tremendous win in a fight taking place at so many workplaces for equal pay for equal work. Bargaining surveys, rallies at the union hall and on campus, flyers and messaging in multiple languages, outreach to new members, and the determination to vote no if necessary made it happen. Member-led organizing gets the goods! Our warmest congratulations to the Teamsters 115 members who didn’t back down on their core demand and showed us all what’s possible. Solidarity!

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Members of Teamsters Local 115 (representing Penn housekeeping, maintenance workers and more) and the Philly Security Officers Union rallied together in front of College Hall today (June 2, 2022) for a fair contract with wage increases, no givebacks of their benefits, and an end to the racist two-tier wage system that pays different hourly rates for the same work. AAUP–Penn members came out to rally in support of this coalition of more than 700 essential workers who have kept our campus running through a pandemic and whose work deserves respect. We stand in solidarity with them as they demand equal pay for equal work at Penn and a fair contract now.

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This Thursday 6/2 at 11am, there will be a labor solidarity rally on our campus in support of university workers (maintenance and housekeeping workers, building security workers, and more) in Teamsters Local 115 and the Philly Security Officers Union. This recently forged Coalition of Essential Workers United for a Fair Contract represents more than 700 campus workers at Penn who are fighting against harassment from management and for a fair contract that protects their benefits and puts an end to the racist two-tier wage scale.

Let’s give them our support by joining the rally on College Green. Wear your AAUP shirt or button and make a sign if you can, but either way please come out and show your solidarity with everyone who works at Penn!

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  • Indiana Graduate Workers (who organized in a right-to-work state!) are still on strike for recognition. The University relies on their teaching, yet grad workers in many departments are paid stipends of less than $18,000 a year—well below the cost of living. They have the endorsement of the Bloomington Faculty Council, the IU Graduate and Professional Student Government, more than 25 academic departments, nearly 600 individual faculty and staff, and AAUP, but their university refuses to recognize them. If you wish to support those walking the picket line, you can do so by contributing to the ICWC-UE strike fund.
  • And here in Philly, PJB Workers United (representing Starbucks workers at multiple stores as well as café workers at Old City Coffee, Good Karma Café, and Korshak Bagels) will be rallying against union-busting TODAY, May 1 at 5pm on the north side of City Hall. Come out and stand with them if you can!
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We are sure our fellow members didn’t miss the late-breaking University Notification on March 24th announcing that Penn is reversing course on its previous 3/15 announcement and extending masking in classrooms. A lot of people who work and study on this campus are breathing a sigh of relief today. Our chapter’s collective action and advocacy made a difference here, and it was great to see the DP’s coverage showing that many students share the same concerns about safety and equity in the spaces where they work and study. Getting this policy reversed so quickly shows what we can do together. Thanks to everyone for contributing to this effort, and let’s keep up the momentum!

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Yesterday, March 15, 2022, the Penn administration announced significant policy changes that eliminate indoor masking and other Covid-19 safety measures on our campus. To express the concerns and objections of many of our colleagues, AAUP–Penn’s Covid Response Task Force and the AAUP–Penn Executive Committee immediately drafted the following joint statement, which we sent to the Interim Provost and Interim President as well as the Faculty Senate Tri-Chairs today, March 16th:

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Dear Interim President Wendell Pritchett, Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein, and Faculty Senate Tri-Chairs William W. Braham, Vivian L. Gadsden, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson,

Having heard from colleagues alarmed by the University’s March 15th announcement regarding policy changes that remove Covid-19 safety measures, the Penn chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP–Penn) writes to share our collective concerns, and to ask the administration to reconsider these policies and provide clarification.

These abruptly announced policy changes are troubling and unsubstantiated by public health science:

  • Screening testing is now required only for those who are unvaccinated, are not yet fully vaccinated, or have not uploaded their booster information.
  • Masking is now optional in most indoor public spaces on campus, with the temporary exception of classrooms
  • Masking will no longer be required in classrooms after March 28.
  • Visitors to campus are no longer required to be fully vaccinated. 

March 28th is less than a month from the end of the academic year. We are unclear as to why there is such a rush to unmask at this late date in the semester, and these new guidelines raise a number of concerns. In particular:

Our students travel widely during spring break, including to countries with rapidly rising Covid-19 rates such as the UK (despite very high vaccination rates) and other countries that have considerably lower vaccination rates. In addition, wastewater testing shows case rates in the U.S. rising at 38% of testing sites over the past two weeks; 15% of wastewater sites tracked by the CDC showed an increase in Covid-19 levels up to 1000%. This data suggests, despite a temporary lull, that the pandemic is not over. Why eliminate screening testing altogether, rather than modify testing policy and wait to gather data about infection rates on campus? Penn claims to rely on its own scientific expertise, yet the findings of its clinical group that supposedly meets regularly to assess OpenPass guidelines and other Covid-19 policies are never shared. Relying for guidance on the city of Philadelphia, which may be basing its decisions on political pressure as much as public health information, seems out of keeping with the knowledge-driven mission of a research university like Penn.

Booster effectiveness has been shown to drop dramatically after 4 months, causing Pfizer to seek approval for fourth boosters for those 65 and older, a population that includes a significant number of faculty members. Although Penn may have set a deadline of January 2022 for boosters, many faculty, graduate students, and staff received their booster shots when they were first available in October 2021. Such personnel are likely much more vulnerable to the new BA.2 variant. Additionally, students who are immunocompromised or not comfortable going maskless may feel self-conscious about wearing masks in class once they are no longer required. The welfare of our students is a top priority for faculty, and we are concerned for vulnerable members of our classes. We are equally concerned for the safety of staff and campus workers, particularly those who work in densely populated indoor spaces.

In light of the above, many of our colleagues ask for and urgently need further explanation and reconsideration: 

  • Will instructors have the option to require students to wear masks in the classroom, even if Penn’s guidelines make masks optional?
  • Will faculty, grads, and staff with caregiving responsibilities for those in high risk categories, such as the elderly and children under 5 who cannot be vaccinated, be able to shift their teaching or work online if they can no longer expect students and those around them in their workplaces to wear masks? 
  • What steps are being taken to ensure that all students feel safe in common spaces, including immunocompromised, disabled, and other high-risk students? 
  • What steps are being taken to protect the health of staff in high-traffic spaces? 

We realize that some members of the Penn community may be eager to go “back to normal,” and we sympathize deeply with that wish. But we cannot wish away the recurring risks or the impact of the pandemic on the lives of faculty, grads, students, and staff. Some of us have lost family members to Covid, and many of us currently care for elderly parents. Some of us live with partners or family members who are immunocompromised, or are older or otherwise medically vulnerable ourselves, and a very large number of faculty and staff have children under 5 who are still unable to be vaccinated. A non-trivial proportion of contingent faculty who teach Penn students and an even higher proportion of subcontracted campus workers may not even have employer-provided medical coverage if they get sick while working on our campus; what will Penn do to keep them safe? From the start of the pandemic our chapter has asked the University to prioritize the wellbeing of the most vulnerable in our community. Removing even the most minimal forms of mitigation such as masking in our shared spaces now feels like organized abandonment. 

In the interest of our entire community, we urge Penn’s central administration to rethink and reverse these premature policy changes.

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We warmly invite AAUP–Penn members to attend the Higher Ed Labor United Winter Summit on February 23–27. You can register here (and see details on HELU and on the Summit agenda below).

Higher Ed Labor United is a nationwide coalition of 116 (and counting!) academic unions, AAUP chapters, and allied organizations representing more than half a million members working together to transform higher education in the interests of students, faculty, grad workers, staff, and the communities we serve. AAUP–Penn joined HELU when it came together last summer by endorsing the inspiring Vision Platform.

The upcoming Winter Summit will feature a mix of online panel sessions, plenaries, and group discussions. You can see the agenda here, and the fantastic lineup of speakers includes Naomi Klein, Stacy Davis Gates, Sara Nelson, and Jane McAlevey. Goals include coordinating the surge of higher ed organizing, centering racial and community justice, building alliances, developing federal policy proposals to reverse the trends that have damaged higher education, and educating politicians and candidates on these issues and working to support those who will advance a program of democratizing higher education. It’s sure to be a stimulating and productive gathering, and an opportunity to build solidarity across campuses and to think creatively and collectively about how to move forward.

Since our chapter is a contributing organization, all members in good standing (i.e. with annual national dues paid to AAUP this year) are invited to attend as many or as few sessions as your schedules allow. If you are an AAUP–Penn member, we encourage you to participate! You can register for free here.

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AAUP–Penn stands with the many graduate student workers at Harvard who walked out of classes on February 14th in solidarity with their colleagues Margaret G. Czerwienski, Lilia M. Kilburn, and Amulya Mandava, whose harassment complaints against Professor John L. Comaroff are now the subject of a lawsuit against Harvard. The details of the case are outrageous; you can read the full text of the lawsuit here. Not least stunning is the disclosure that Harvard allegedly obtained confidential records from the private therapist of one of the complainants and gave this private mental health information to her harasser. The failures of the Title IX system are evident in that office’s apparent complicity in Harvard’s mishandling of complaints. This is why HGSU-UAW has called for neutral, third-party arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination at Harvard—a key provision that SWC successfully won in their recent first contract with Columbia

The circling of wagons around Comaroff by 38 prominent senior faculty who signed an ill-informed letter in his defense was deeply disheartening. We take more encouragement from the thousands of people at Harvard and elsewhere who signed this letter denouncing it and supporting the complainants, and from this earlier statement signed by over 100 Harvard faculty in solidarity with grads (in November 2021, prior to the current suit) supporting HGSU’s demand for real recourse. This case bears out the need for it, and the student editors of the Harvard Crimson make the same argument in this editorial.

These issues are pervasive, often entrenched in status hierarchies that make graduate students vulnerable—especially in cases of harassment by an advisor on whom their careers may depend and about whom they cannot complain without serious professional and personal consequences. Gendered and racial inequity and power imbalances exacerbate these problems for grads and, indeed, for faculty on and off the tenure track as well. In the politicized climate of the past six years, threats against the academic freedom of women and LGBTQIA faculty, and faculty of color, often take the form of sexual harassment. Graduate students and student workers, faculty, and staff at Penn are justifiably concerned about how our own University handles cases of workplace harassment, sexual and otherwise. An op-ed from last spring by Penn students on national Title IX review and the need for Penn to take more active steps to prevent sexual assault and harassment attests that this concern is longstanding. Anecdotally, too many of us know of complaints of discrimination and workplace harassment that have been swept under the rug. An overreliance on the often dysfunctional Title IX apparatus is part of the problem. We need assurance from the Penn administration that the University is committed both to preventing harassment, assault, and discrimination in the first place and to pursuing complaints in a serious and impartial manner.

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