Posts tagged University of Pennsylvania
We finally know who paid for Josh Shapiro’s inauguration celebrations (kinda)
August 12, 2025 // A fundraising pitch prepared by Shapiro’s inauguration committee and reviewed by Spotlight PA promised high-dollar contributors face time with the governor. “VIP tickets to the Inaugural Celebration include access to the VIP lounge through the evening,” fine print on the document states. “A clutch with Governor-Elect Shapiro and Lt. Governor-Elect [Austin] Davis will be held in the VIP lounge at the start of the event.” Unlike some states, cities, and the federal government, Pennsylvania does not require top elected officials to disclose who contributes to celebrations held to mark their entrance into office. Shapiro has declined to do so voluntarily.
Postdoctoral scholars and research assistants at Penn vote to unionize
July 24, 2025 // Research Associates and Postdocs United at Penn would join the United Auto Workers labor union, which represents over 120,000 academic workers across the country, including 4,000 graduate workers at Penn who voted to unionize last year. Will Drayer, a postdoctoral researcher in materials science and engineering at Penn and a forefront member of the campaign to unionize, said the next steps include democratically electing a bargaining committee and surveying members to establish clear priorities before entering contract negotiations with the university.
Penn Museum workers demand raises, protest Univ. pay proposals in picket after authorizing strike
July 10, 2025 // “The average annual salary in the bargaining unit is less than $45,000,” Shaw said. “We’re looking for raises that will not only allow workers to keep up with increases in the cost of living, but to do better over time.” Union leaders also handed out flyers that emphasized Penn’s continued “lowball pay proposals” despite the University’s “annual operating budget of $4.7 billion.” “It’s not so much to ask from the University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer and one of the wealthiest in the city,” Shaw said.
Guest column: Union democracy? Not so much
May 21, 2024 // The AFL-CIO Philadelphia Council announced GET-UP may be Philadelphia’s largest private sector union. Nonetheless, GET-UP did not secure — as some overzealous headlines suggest — an “overwhelming majority.” Yes, the 1,807-to-97 vote to unionize was undoubtedly one-sided. However, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported 4,003 eligible voters, meaning only 45 percent of the total workforce supported unionization. Other reports suggest a lower denominator of 3,700 voters. Even then, that’s only 48 percent — clearly less than “the majority of the employees in a unit” seemingly described in the National Labor Relations Act. Yet, due to federal court decisions that strayed from the statutory text long ago, UAW only needed a simple majority
Penn grad student workers vote to unionize after 2 decades of advocacy
May 7, 2024 // The Graduate Employees Together University of Pennsylvania, also known as Get-UP, announced Friday that just over 1,900 of the 3,700 eligible voters turned out last week, with 95% voting in favor of joining the United Auto Workers union, which represents several other graduate student unions at colleges across the country.
America’s newest doctors fuel efforts to unionize
April 17, 2024 // And it's not just younger doctors. Those more established in their careers are also unionizing as they see the industry changing in ways that they think undermine their profession. In recent months, attending physicians at Salem Hospital, owned by Mass General Brigham, and a Cedars Sinai-owned anesthesiology practice filed to unionize. About 600 doctors at Allina Health in Minnesota and Wisconsin last fall agreed to form what appears to be the largest union of private sector physicians.
Graduate students file for union election, marking last Ivy to do so
April 17, 2024 // Gaby Nair GS, an organizer with PGSU, told the ‘Prince’ that a “strong majority” of graduate students had signed union cards. The threshold for an NLRB election is 30 percent. PGSU was unable to provide a specific number of signatories to the ‘Prince.’ “We’re really looking forward to getting [an election] date … hopefully that process goes smoothly. We’ve seen it not go smoothly at some of our peer institutions,” Nair said, referencing unionization efforts at the University of Pennsylvania. There, graduate students initially filed for a union election in October, but were delayed by an NLRB ruling that declared roughly 300 students under certain educational fellowships ineligible. The union at Penn was set to vote this Tuesday and Wednesday, but it was rescheduled to May 1 and 2. Princeton has been slower to unionize than some of its peer institutions. Apart from Penn, all other Ivy League universities have formally recognized graduate student unions.
Philly workers got organized in 2023. Look back on this year’s strikes, walkouts, and union campaigns.
December 30, 2023 // As worker organizing activity heated up toward the end of 2022, with new unions and strikes grabbing headlines through the fall, labor leaders predicted 2023 would be an even bigger year for employees seizing on their leverage.
The Newest Union Members Are Undergrads
December 20, 2023 // With help from groups like the Service Employees International Union and the Office and Professional Employees International Union, students consolidated support for elections, contract talks and headline-making protests. Their muscle has surprised longtime observers of the labor movement, some of whom have wondered where, exactly, young adults learned some of the finer points of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. (Part of the answer: Instagram direct messages with organizers on other campuses.)
Student Activists Are Turning Their Attention to the Labor Movement
June 22, 2023 // Last year, the Young Democratic Socialists of America’s Red Hot Summer program trained hundreds of young people to organize their workplaces and helped launch union drives representing thousands. This year’s program hopes to be even bigger, writes YDSA’s cochair. Student workers across the country are engaged in an unprecedented wave of labor organization. Spurred on by the support of organizations like the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), of which I am cochair, undergraduate student workers have launched union drives on nearly thirty public and private campuses in the United States. These workers are fighting for increased pay, improvements to scheduling and hours, sick pay, and better health care. They are also fighting for issues that go beyond bread and butter, like removing Israeli products from dining halls.