Hearing Update: Day 3
Yesterday, Penn State Admin began their legal case arguing that Research Assistants and Trainees aren’t employees. In their opening statement, admin’s lawyers argued that graduate school is a “service” for training the next generation of researchers and therefore the work we perform during our graduate programs doesn’t make us employees. Admin also argued that grad workers’ academic work cannot be separated from our duties as RAs, and that employment benefits are simply provided so that grad workers can focus on academic studies and research, not in exchange for the work and value we all provide to the university. Two of the three witnesses called yesterday were former or current graduate advisors. It is disappointing to see university administrators and professors testifying against their own students and workers, even as they simultaneously acknowledge our important contributions to Penn State and beyond.
Admin’s first witness was Tracy Langkilde, Interim Vice President and Provost of Penn State and a professor in the Biology department who has previously advised graduate students.. Langkilde acknowledged that “this whole thing would fall apart if we didn’t have graduate students being trained up to fulfill roles in industry and government at R1 institutions,” but refused to acknowledge that what we do as research assistants and trainees is work. She also suggested that, despite the cutting-edge research our labor makes possible, grad workers are ultimately a burden on the university system and “there is a reason that industry isn’t run on graduate students.” Industry may not run on grad labor, but we know that Penn State does!
Admin’s second witness was Nikki Crowley, an assistant biology professor and current director of the neuroscience institute. She emphasized the “mentorship mission” of grad school and claimed that the bulk of our work–writing manuscripts and grants, providing revisions, and conducting reviews–amounts to “soft skills” that are presumably undeserving of compensation. Of course, these tasks take up a significant amount of grad workers’ time and resources, and the outcomes of our labor are the millions of dollars in grant funding Penn State receives each year.
Crowley also claimed that the work of writing manuscripts and grants, providing revisions, and reviews was unrelated to work and described these tasks as “soft skills”. These skills take up a significant amount of time and resources, and the outcomes provide tangible funding benefits of millions of dollars to the university each year, contributing to Penn State’s $1.337 billion in research expenditures.
Admin’s final witness was Courtney Karmelita, a Research Integrity Officer with the Office of Research Protections. While research integrity is integral for all researchers at Penn State, it has nothing to do with our argument that RAs and trainees are workers. By dragging out the hearing with irrelevant witnesses, admin continues to show that they would rather fight against us than work with us.
The administration plans to call upon witnesses for two more days. Graduate workers will continue to report back on what is said at the hearing. We stand strong in the knowledge that we are ALL workers, no matter how inconvenient that fact might be for admin.