University of Pennsylvania graduate students opposed to a
union drive on campus had lawyered up. But they didn’t pick just any lawyer.
They chose Wally Zimolong, the Philadelphia lawyer behind
a successful drive to get National Labor Relations Board regional director
Dennis Walsh suspended for a month in
2015 over allegations of appearing biased because he raised money for a
scholarship fund for law students interning with pro-union law firms, unions,
or worker-advocacy groups.
They picked a lawyer who tweeted about the NLRB in April:
“When is the @realDonaldTrump going to dismantle this whacko leftist agency?”
Plus, the union foes said on their website, they got
Zimolong’s help for free, because the Center for Independent Employees “has
agreed to pay for his legal fees.” CIE says it aids people “opposed to union
oppression in their workplace.” It receives funding from a Koch brothers
affiliate, according to Sourcewatch, run by the Center for Media and Democracy.
But, on Saturday, six days after they chose Zimolong,
they severed their ties to him. “It really became clear that Wally’s personal
beliefs do not match ours,” Ian Henrich, one of the leaders of the group, No
Penn Union, wrote in an email.
As NLRB hearings resume in
Philadelphia on Monday over whether the grad students — who teach, assist
in laboratories, and perform research — have properly formed a group for a
union election, students who don’t want a union had said they needed legal help
to keep pro-union forces from “continuing to harass” them, as they said on
their website.
“During our campaign, it was becoming increasingly clear
that we simply did not have the experience and knowledge about the intricacies
of labor law,” the group’s website said. The group reached out to labor
lawyers, but only Zimolong, with his background in legal matters involving the
NLRB, was willing to help. “During our initial meeting, he was polite and
professional, and agreed to provide us with legal advice when we needed it.”
“We apologize to our fellow students,” the website said.
“In our rush to better understand labor law, we did not fully investigate all
aspects of our new partner,” the website said.
The pro-union group had said that their grad student
colleagues were being hijacked by a lawyer with a right-wing agenda.
Welcome to the world of union elections, where it doesn’t
take long for civility to erode, even among earnest, latte-drinking
doctoral students at a prestigious Ivy League institution.
No Penn Union says GET-UP, the graduate
students’ group that affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers,
improperly used the university’s student directory to contact people about the
union. GET-UP, it says, gave students who wanted to withdraw a hard time, and
deliberately did not include engineering and Wharton School grad students in
the NLRB election petition because more of them opposed the union.
GET-UP is “promising things that are beyond the capacity
of a union,” said Scott Dooley, a doctoral student doing research in gene
therapy as part of the Biomedical Graduate Studies research program. “They are
pandering to us. It’s not realistic.”
Salar Mohandesi, one of the original organizers of the
graduate student union drive at the University of Pennsylvania, said the group
of students opposed to the drive had “invited a right-wing ideologue to hijack
this process.”
The GET-UP people deny all harassment and say they have
support in every school.
Zimolong “sees this as a battle in a national campaign to
get rid of unions and the NLRB,” said Salar Mohandesi, one of the original
organizers of the GET-UP drive. Mohandesi graduated from Penn in May with a
Ph.D. in European history. He could not be reached Saturday afternoon to
comment on Zimolong’s departure.
In an email, university spokesman Ron Ozio said: “We are
unaware of and uninvolved with any such development.”
Henrich, a graduate student researching cancer, had said
in an interview Thursday that No Penn Union would not allow itself to be used
as propaganda. “If they try to feature us in a news conference, like `Look at
these poor grad students being bullied by the union,’ that won’t happen.”
In an interview Friday, Zimolong said he took the case pro
bono, without financial help from the Center for Independent Employees,
because “I believe in the little guy.” He said he didn’t know why the
students had said the CIE was paying him, noting that the CIE is a “group I can
rely on for advice and counsel.”
Zimolong said unions want grad students because their
traditional membership base has eroded. “These union bosses are the fat cats,
who want more union dues to finance their political agenda,” he said. As for
Penn’s students, “I want to make sure they aren’t being bullied by the
union.”
Given labor laws, the No Penn Union members enrolled in
the Biomedical Graduate Studies program are in a complex spot: They can’t
turn to the American Federation of Teachers, which is helping GET-UP, because
they disagree with the union’s tactics. And, because they are part of the
schools GET-UP included in its election petition, they can’t seek assistance
from the university, which would risk an unfair labor practice if it interfered
with the students enrolled in schools GET-UP included in the proposed
bargaining unit.
Zimolong had been contacted by one of their members,
Henrich and Zimolong said.
Henrich and Dooley said they aren’t opposed to unions,
but they didn’t like how GET-UP included their biomedical program among
pro-union students petitioning the NLRB. They don’t need a union, they say.
“I don’t care if another school wants to unionize,”
Henrich said. “I don’t know their situations, so I don’t have a right to say.
But we should have a choice.”
Source: Philly.com
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