Union Organizer at Penn State’s Grad School Cites University’s ‘Veiled Threat’ to Foreign Students

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A long-awaited vote on unionizing graduate-student workers at Pennsylvania State University coincided this week with what some students are calling a “thinly veiled threat” after the graduate school warned international students that going on strike — a possible step for union members — “could affect their visa status.” It also said that “the union cannot protect their immigration status.”

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the graduate school asserted that pro-union organizations had argued that the university’s information on the stakes for international students in the event of unionization was flawed. The post then cited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy as determining that “if the student has stopped taking courses or stopped performing research and that is what is required for their program, the student’s record should be terminated immediately and they will have to leave the U.S. as soon as possible.”

Also in the post, the graduate school linked to a statement from Washington University in St. Louis, which faced a vote on unionizing graduate-student workers last September. Its provost, Holden Thorp, sent an email to graduate students with a list of answers to frequently asked questions about unionizing. Among them was whether unionizing could affect international students’ visas. The same quotation from the federal immigration agency appears verbatim in that message.

Although Washington University stated it would “not report a student’s change in status to the government unless it determined that” it was legally required to do so, it stipulated that “universities are legally required to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Department of Homeland Security) if a student fails to maintain status.”

Penn State’s post also encouraged its 3,000 graduate students — about a quarter of its overall graduate enrollment — to participate in the vote, which started on Monday and will continue through Friday. The outcome will be known next week.

“It looks like it’s a last-minute kind of scare tactic to scare people away to not voting or to get them to vote no,” said Garrett L. DuCharme, the chief organizer for the Coalition of Graduate Employees at Penn State. “They’re doing everything they can to make these vague and thinly veiled threats to try and scare people away.”

Behind a Closed Door

That Tuesday post, DuCharme said, was in response to a memorandum the coalition released to combat “misinformation” from the university about “how they don’t know what could happen to international students and how they have the best interests at heart.” The memo, written by a local law firm, says international students will not be at risk in the event of a strike.

“They should have the right to be protected, to vote,” DuCharme said, “and they should not be intimidated by the university.”

In an emailed statement, the university said: “Penn State has consistently and vigorously defended the interests of international students, and will continue to do so. The university encourages all graduate assistants and trainees to get the facts, be informed, and vote in the election. There are still four election days left for graduate students to make their voices heard by voting.”

Graduate-student workers, who serve as teaching and research assistants, have been moving toward a union vote since 2014, when their health-care plan was changed, DuCharme said. As a result, an advocacy group on student-health policy was formed to provide input, but it had no say.

“All the meetings that determine those kinds of things are closed door, and then it’s just relayed to this group, and they don’t really have any power,” he said. In February the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruled that the graduate students should be allowed to vote.

Pro-union graduate students across the country have protested their universities’ response to their union drives. At some private colleges, the students have accused administrators of purposely tying up the efforts in litigation in anticipation of a National Labor Relations Board, reshaped by Trump appointees, that would overturn the ability of grad students at private colleges to unionize.

Correction (4/12/2018, 10:59 a.m.): A previous version of this article stated incorrectly that students formed an advisory group in 2014 after changes were made in their health-care plan. It was an advocacy group. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.