Pennsylvania
Penn grad workers say ‘we’re part of a national movement’ after union win
The Graduate Employees Together University of Pennsylvania, or GET-UP, is behind the drive to affiliate with the United Auto Workers, which often represents student worker unions.
The union election was scheduled for mid-April but was delayed after the University of Pennsylvania tried to exclude several hundred student workers through the National Labor Relations Board appeal process, but the university failed.
There are about 4,000 eligible graduate student worker voters. There were 1,807 workers who voted in favor of the union, 97 voted against it and there were 417 challenged ballots.
The ultimate size of the union will likely be several thousand workers, but the exact number is expected to fluctuate depending on when student workers graduate or their appointments end.
The university is waiting for official certification of the results by the National Labor Relations Board but recognizes the union election’s unofficial results.
“At Penn, we engage as a community to advance what is important to us all — a dynamic and supportive academic environment,” said Ron Ozio, a spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania, in a statement. “We look forward to working with representatives from the UAW to continue this important mission for Penn’s graduate and professional students.”
Graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania earn a minimum stipend of $38,000 during the academic year. The biggest increase happened in the past year, when the minimum stipend increased by $8,000.
The university estimates the value of its funding packages for Ph.D. students, which include scholarships to cover tuition and fees, stipends, medical insurance and gym memberships, is $88,244.
Graduate students typically spend about six years working towards their Ph.D. degrees, which means there’ll be turnover in union members.
Dozens of student workers have already graduated in the past four years, but organizers say there’s more behind them ready to step up.
“We’re always bringing in new worker organizers who are in their first or second year. It’s really important for the long-term health of the union at Penn to do that,” Schirvar said.
Nationwide, colleges rely more on graduate student worker labor, said Celine McNicholas, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C.
“Universities have increasingly shifted teaching duties away from those 10-year-track faculty onto graduate students, adjuncts and instructors,” McNicholas said. “That leaves a large portion of the research and teaching at some of the most prestigious universities really being done by folks who are there pursuing their own education.”
There were two previous unionization efforts by GET-UP at the University of Pennsylvania that were not successful.
In 2003, the first unionization effort at the University of Pennsylvania died after the National Labor Relations Board ruled against graduate student unions at private universities. At the time, the federal agency was overseen by the Bush administration.
In 2017, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that all graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania — including those in the business and engineering schools — should be eligible to vote.
By 2018, GET-UP withdrew its union petition during the Trump administration as a strategic move.
Now Trump is on the presidential ballot again this November. It’s unclear what the National Labor Relations Board under Trump may do. But in the past, it ruled against private university student worker unionization efforts. If the University of Pennsylvania and GET-UP don’t ink a contract before those changes, the union could have little recourse about a lack of bargaining in good faith.
But graduate student workers do have some leverage as the lynchpin of the university academic workforce.
“It’s not like Starbucks where you can just close the coffee shop or fire all the baristas and hire more people off the street,” said Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology and labor students at the City University of New York. “Graduate students are highly skilled and not that easily replaced. So that doesn’t mean [the university] won’t drag it out, but that they have some leverage.”
There’s been much more stress about student debt and fewer tenure track jobs waiting for graduate student workers when they graduate.
“That’s been building up for a long time but it’s getting worse,” Milkman said.
Warning: The details of this story are graphic and could be disturbing for some readers.
A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to stabbing his wife to death, officials announced on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, March 11, 2025, around 8:30 a.m., Bethlehem Township Police responded to a home on the 2100 block of 3rd Street in Easton, Pennsylvania, for a welfare check. A family member had told police they were concerned about the wellbeing of the people inside the house.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522.
The responding officers banged on the doors and windows, announcing their presence but no one answered. They then used a ladder to enter a second-floor window and were met by 58-year-old James Christopher Frank.
After opening the door for the officers, Frank led them into a bedroom and told them, “My wife is dead in the bathtub.” The officers entered the bathroom and found the body of Frank’s wife, 55-year-old Deborah Denise Glaser, in the tub. Glaser was facedown in the tub with multiple puncture wounds while her shirt was soaked in blood.
The officers also found knives, razor blades, box cutters and a mallet inside the bathroom.
Frank admitted to police that he cut his wife’s throat with a steak knife. He then told police he punctured his wife’s chest and heart with a knife and hammer around 10 times to make sure she was dead. He was then arrested and charged.
On Wednesday, June 10, 2026, Frank entered a guilty plea to the charge of first-degree murder. The mandatory sentence is life in prison. He is scheduled for sentencing on June 17, 2026.
Lawmakers in Pennsylvania are pushing for legislation that would require devices like smart glasses to visually indicate when they’re recording.
Joe Ciresi, a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and majority chair of the House Communications and Technology Committee, introduced a bill (known as House Bill 2603) that would require smart glasses manufactured, sold, and used in Pennsylvania to have a visual indicator when the device is recording audio or video.
According to a report by local news outlet abc27 News, Ciresi describes the bill’s provisions as “common-sense privacy safeguards for smart glasses to help protect Pennsylvanians from potential misuse of this emerging technology.”
There is currently no nationwide law in the U.S. requiring smart glasses to display a light or other indicator while recording. The proposed measure would affect only recording devices used in Pennsylvania.
House Bill 2603 would also require retailers to clearly inform users of Pennsylvania’s existing recording laws and to prevent users from disabling any visual indicator that shows the device is recording.
“Smart glasses are an innovative technological advancement, but their design also allows them to easily record or stream without anyone noticing,” Ciresi says. “Considering the implications this has for individual privacy and surveillance, we must take thoughtful, proactive steps to address those risks.”
Smart glasses have one obvious privacy concern: people can record others clandestinely. Most smart glasses currently on the market — including Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses — have indicator lights designed to show people nearby when a user is recording video or taking photos. However, there is currently no U.S.-wide requirement for manufacturers to include such features in devices. This newly introduced bill in Pennsylvania could change that by requiring smart glasses sold or used in the state to clearly show when audio or video recording is taking place.
Nonetheless, although Ray-Ban smart glasses show a blinking red light when recording, many people who are filmed for social media attention or otherwise say they do not realize they are being recorded.
Meta has also faced controversy over the company’s reported plans to introduce facial recognition technology into its Ray-Ban smart glasses, with a feature internally known as “Name Tag.” The news outlet WIRED discovered dormant code for the facial recognition system in Meta’s companion app for its line of Ray-Ban smart glasses, leading the company to quietly delete the software a day later.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
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