by an organizer with United RAs at Penn
On March 14, 2023, the residential advisors (RAs) of Penn’s college houses filed for unionization, a historic first for student workers. The unionization effort was an inevitable response to Penn’s relentless and shameless mistreatment of its workers. We intend to use our collective power to create a better and more equitable work environment.
What is a Union?
A union is a democratic institution where workers can meet, discuss, debate, and vote on key decisions. The union is made up entirely of the workers, in this case, all RAs.
Once a union is won, the workers elect a bargaining committee, a group of workers responsible for speaking directly to their employers. Through collective bargaining, workers negotiate contracts with their employers to define rules and expectations relating to the job, which can be anything ranging from pay, benefits, vacation days, safety policies, and more. As a democratic body, the contract that this bargaining committee creates will only be ratified if a majority of union members support it.
Unions have been an integral part of labor history in the US — unions are the reason we have the 8-hour workday (instead of a 10 to 16-hour workday), minimum wage, overtime pay, job safety laws, social security, and equal treatment laws. Unions help the workers form a powerful collective voice equal to their bosses, and they bring much-needed change to the workplace.
What are the RAs and GRAs’ Demands?
The RA position is central to the functioning of Penn’s campus life: RAs are responsible for crafting the culture of College Houses and creating a safe and engaging environment for Penn’s students. They are the ones creating bulletin boards, planning weekly events, attending frequent meetings with House Directors, setting up meetings with their residents, and staying on campus through weekends and holidays. They mediate conflicts between students, assist them through the difficult transition into college life, and respond to their residents’ physical and mental health emergencies. All at once, our RAs are expected to be our teachers, our counselors, our leaders, and our friends, all while being full time students. Without the labor of RAs and GAs, university life would not function. Ultimately, Penn works because we do.
RAs don’t do their job just for the pay or the benefits (and considering there are no pay or benefits, this is already obvious). Speak to an RA, and it becomes apparent that they have a true passion for helping people and creating community. For incoming freshmen, your RA is usually your first point of contact after moving to an unfamiliar campus, in an unfamiliar city surrounded by thousands of unfamiliar faces.
Despite this, the position is consistently undervalued by College House and Academic Services (CHAS) leadership. RAs are workers, and like all workers, they deserve to have protections on the job.
RAs are entirely unpaid — they receive only a single-occupancy room and a meal plan which provides the equivalent of 3 meals a week. For students on financial aid, many of whom are first-generation low-income (FGLI), Penn reduces their aid grant by the cost of this single-occupancy room, so there is often no financial benefit associated with the RA position for students on financial aid. Work-study awards are often decreased or removed for these students as well. In short, RAs on financial aid receive less compensation than their wealthier peers.
Even still, Penn’s claim that “free” housing counts as compensation for the RA position is like saying a professor’s office is compensation for their job. Being a full-time unpaid student on top of being a full-time unpaid RA is untenable, especially because RAs cannot hold any other paid campus position.
Additionally, RAs are expected to make up for Penn’s failures in maintaining their housing facilities. Whether you’re living in a 300-year old dorm or a brand new one, flooding, fires, power outages, wifi issues, mold, and any other maintenance disasters you can think of are common occurrences. One GRA writes:
“…Penn is taking advantage of those that need the most help. After living here for a year, I realized the money the school is saving is not even going into the building. I am fortunate to have free housing, but at what cost? Elevators are always broken in a 25-floor building, constant plumbing and leakage issues, and the lack of urgency for students’ concerns about the building’s safety. All RAs deserve to be fairly compensated and have good living conditions.”
– Penn Graduate resident assistant
Paid CHAS administrators expect their unpaid, full-time student workers to make up for their shortcomings, and put themselves in danger for their job. The responsibilities of an RA often stretch far beyond what is expected or even reasonable: in 2023, there were numerous incidents where intruders walked into dorm buildings and past the security gates. Instead of calling the police or alerting security, the RAs on duty were told to handle the intruder themselves.
RAs are expected to be the College House’s first responders, whether it’s for a security issue, a student that needs medical attention, or a student experiencing a mental health crisis. Especially considering Penn is infamous for its failing mental health system and month-long waiting times for counseling appointments, much of the burden of mental health response ultimately falls onto these RAs.
New RAs receiving ICARE training, Penn’s training for responding to mental health concerns. However, RAs allege they are often left in the dark when it comes to handling mental health crises, as they’re simultaneously expected to be prepared for every situation they may encounter, while also receiving inadequate training and no support from CHAS. During a training session with CHAS leadership last year, for example, numerous RAs attempted to voice their concerns about their mental health response training. Instead of addressing their difficult questions, CHAS leadership simply shut down their questions and moved on — a response that reflects CHAS’ general lack of care and support for their workers, especially in the places where it truly counts.
The RAs of 2020: AKA, Why Unionization is Necessary
The pandemic was the boiling point for Penn’s RAs, with decades of mistreatment from CHAS becoming painfully apparent during one of the most difficult and dangerous times in recent memory.
When campus was closed during the height of the pandemic, a number of RAs were forced to return, acting as guinea pigs for Penn’s new COVID testing system. RAs were made the primary enforcers of campus COVID policies, which were unclear and often untenable. CHAS expected them to police students who were not complying with rules — something that, in the midst of an already stressful period, proved to be an undue burden on RAs.
Their concerns about their health and safety were consistently minimized and often ignored. RAs made numerous attempts at civil negotiation and discussion with CHAS leadership — including signing an open letter and petition demanding a fairer contract — but were only met with vitriol and contempt. When a section of these students began talking about unionization, CHAS threatened to fire them. While this is blatantly illegal under federal labor law, their threats nevertheless stymied unionization efforts among vulnerable students who were relying on CHAS for housing in the middle of a pandemic.
During one infamous Zoom call when RAs tried to bring up their concerns and the possibility of negotiating a new contract, Beth Winkelstein repeatedly muted their microphones and shouted, “THERE IS NO NEGOTIATION.”
One anonymous RA details her experience working during the pandemic:
“Unfortunately, things didn’t get better during my time. Beth Winkelstein got promoted rather than being held accountable for how she spoke to us. […] I returned to Philadelphia a week after my mom had a stroke instead of being with her because CHAS implied I would lose my job if I didn’t return immediately.
It was an impossible job. […] A year later, the contract only got worse with ridiculous clauses such as CHAS telling RAs that they can re-locate us whenever they want with no warning, and that CHAS can change the dining allocation ‘as needed.’”
This is exactly why a union is necessary. Penn using their power and leverage to silence their student workers was blatantly obvious during the pandemic, but it’s an insidious tactic that continues to this day. All workers deserve a voice on the job. Under a union, there will be negotiation.
A group of RAs and supporters gathered outside Harnwell College House at the campus-wide rally on March 31, 2023. Photo credits to Joe Piette.
Union busting: Why Penn is Afraid of Us?
After months and months of underground door knocking, one-on-one conversations, and organizing committee meetings, the RA union campaign finally went public on March 14, 2023, and was met with unprecedented support from across the country.
With a supermajority of RAs signing the petition to form a union, Penn could have respected the democratic values they claim to stand for, and voluntarily recognize the union. Instead, they decided to focus all of their effort into defeating us — their own students. After hushed closed-door meetings with CHAS and Penn leadership, Penn decided to hire the elite law firm Cozen O’Connor, an employer-side labor firm that, apart from having ties to the Trump campaign, has also been notorious for rolling back labor rights across Philadelphia.
Over the next few months, Penn paid the lawyers at Cozen O’Connor thousands of dollars per hour to devise illegal union-busting tactics to use against our campaign.
Penn sent out numerous emails to RAs filled with lies and threats about engaging in union activity. Penn also violated federal labor law on multiple other occasions by attempting to spy on union activity and tearing down our posters across campus hours after we put them up. With the help of OPEIU, the union providing legal and structural support to our campaign (and the union that has sponsored RA campaigns across the country), URAP filed for numerous Unfair Labor Practices against Lulu Kaliher (Senior Director of CHAS) and other CHAS leadership.
Workers have a federally protected right to organize. Penn could have voluntarily recognized the union, or at the very least, agreed to let the RAs vote in a democratic election. Ultimately, RAs are simply exercising their rights, and Penn is openly defying the democratic values they claim to stand for.
In mid-March, as we were preparing for an election, Penn and Cozen O’Connor submitted a brief to the National Labor Relations Board claiming that RAs are not workers, but “student leaders,” and therefore ineligible to unionize. During the 2-day long hearing, Penn’s lawyers and our lawyers made their respective cases for the status of RAs.
Throughout the hearing, which lasted nearly 12 hours each day, Penn/Cozen O’Connor brought a seemingly random assortment of witnesses to the stand, from financial aid advisors to the director of NSO, all to support their case. Among other things, they claimed the RA position is “primarily academic,” and unionization would hurt the University’s “academic freedom.”
Fittingly, they did not question any RAs, and refused to cross-examine our own witness — an RA himself, and the only person who spoke during the hearing that was actually familiar with the realities of the position. The counsel representing our union provided a wealth of evidence showing that by Penn’s own definition, RAs are workers, and have the right to form a union.
Helen Gym, former Philadelphia City Councilmember and 2023 mayoral candidate, addresses a crowd of supporters at the campus rally on March 31, 2023. Photo credits to Joe Piette.
Where we’ll go from here…
Penn knows they will not win this case. The legal precedent, and plain common sense, is on our side: RAs are workers. Penn did, however, want to delay the election and prevent RAs from organizing — if Penn had not brought this case to the NLRB, the RAs could have held an election in May. Nevertheless, the solidarity and energy among RAs is much stronger than Penn’s attempts to stifle our campaign.
It’s clear Penn would rather spend thousands of thousands of dollars fighting their own students in court rather than put a penny towards paying them a wage. However, the issue of labor on Penn’s campus will not be going away any time soon. The labor of its students, its researchers, its professors, its janitors, its maintenance staff, and its resident advisors are what makes this campus operate each and every day. Penn works because we do.
We have widespread support from Penn’s own unions, RA campaigns at other universities, local Philly unions, politicians and community leaders like Rick Krajewski and Helen Gym, nationwide union leaders like Chris Smalls of the Amazon Labor Union, the Daily Pennsylvanian Editorial Board, and many more. As of writing this, over 900 letters of support from the Penn, Philly, and nationwide community have been sent to Penn leadership. Over 50 Penn clubs and 110 professors have signed a letter in support of the campaign. We held one campus-wide rally last semester and hope to continue bringing the campus together in support of workers’ rights.
Just in the past few months, the unionized Penn Museum workers won their first contract, the residents at Penn Medicine won their union election, and Penn’s graduate students went public with their campaign. The energy around labor organizing is palpable. Even if Penn continues to delay our election, we know our rights, and we are confident that we will win.
That being said, we are only as strong as the people that stand beside us. This is a new and transformative era for Penn, and we encourage you to be a part of it. If you are interested in supporting the campaign, follow @unitedrasatpenn on Instagram and look out for updates and actions. And of course, show up to your next College House hall event and let your RA know that you value their work.
If you are a new or returning RA interested in getting involved, please get in touch with us! We would love to have you. DM us on Instagram, or shoot us an email at unitedrasatpenn@gmail.com, and we’ll connect you with a member of our organizing committee.
Penn Disorientation Guide 