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Another rowdy student group recently took over an Ivy League school, driven by outside agitators who neither attend nor care about the university's success. But these students weren't advocating for a ceasefire or divestment. Instead, they demanded a union.
Despite lacking majority support, these students successfully unionized -- and their actions were entirely legal.
Led by Shawn Fain and the United Auto Workers (UAW), about 4,000 graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania finally unionized after a 20-year campaign, forming the Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP) as a UAW affiliate. 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 of those who voted to secure GET-UP's "exclusive representative" status over 100 percent of Penn graduate students. This rule encourages unions to obscure election times and dates, then pump up close supporter turnout.
Regardless, Fain and UAW now ostensibly have "power of attorney" over all Penn graduate students, including the genuine majority who didn't ask to unionize. Unfortunately, these students will likely face union-imposed intrusions restricting their ability to teach, write, and research, with the constant threat of a strike disrupting their graduation and, in some cases, their student visas.
A driving catalyst behind this hostile takeover was former President Barack Obama's NLRB, which reversed years of precedent that once made unionization for graduate students impossible. Then, unions like UAW were itching for new members -- and they found them. As of late last year, nearly a third of UAW's members work in academia. In 2023, 31 percent of all unionizing private sector workers were from higher education.
And as the GET-UP vote shows, it's not a democratic process.
Not only was the vote by less than a majority of those affected, but graduate students, in general, are what NLRB once called "transient." Simply put, the students who voted for GET-UP will unlikely be around long enough to work under a union-negotiated contract, and many who do will likely leave before negotiating the next contract. Moreover, they are not traditional "employees" because their short-term work intertwines with their education.
Unionization just doesn't fit.
Even if unionization were a good idea, UAW's questionable commitment to union democracy makes it a doubtful student ally. As part of a settlement for the union's extensive fraud and corruption, UAW didn't grant members the right to directly elect union officials until 2020.
Yet, state and federal labor laws protect union officials and make unionization efforts like GET-UP's evermore possible. Although federal law is the main culprit at Penn, most states, including Pennsylvania, also allow state-regulated unions to win without a workplace majority.
Perhaps worse, in nearly every state with a public sector union presence, unions maintain their workplace monopolies for decades without facing reelection. Roughly 94 percent of unionized employees never vote for union representation at all.
Unfortunately, we're not likely to see a change at the federal level. President Joe Biden's NLRB has only helped union officials expand their power over private sector workers.
But lawmakers can make significant changes at the state level.
Florida, for example, recently restored some semblance of union democracy by requiring reelections for unions with low membership rates, among other reforms. Utah and Iowa considered similar reforms. Louisiana appears one election away from enacting these reforms, effectively returning power to the employees whom union officials should represent.
As the 2024 election looms, countless writers lament the "threats to our democracy." Meanwhile, it's curious to see unions get such a brazen free pass to violate democratic ideals. Lawmakers must never forget that democracy is fragile -- not only at the ballot box but also in the workplace.
David R. Osborne is senior fellow of labor policy with the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania's free-market think tank.