<\/p>\n
The office of the president in Penn State\u2019s Old Main on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. <\/p>\n
Abby Drey<\/p>\n
adrey@centredaily.com<\/p>\n
More than 100 Pennsylvania state legislators sent a letter to Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi urging the administration not to interfere with a faculty unionization effort. The university says it expects a mail-in ballot election could begin later this semester.<\/p>\n
FULL STORY: Pennsylvania lawmakers urge Penn State to avoid interference in faculty union effort<\/a><\/p>\n Here are five key takeaways:<\/p>\n \u2022 The letter was signed by 102 state legislators, including Centre County Reps. Scott Conklin, D-Rush Township, and Paul Takac, D-College Township. They urged the administration to commit to not interfering with faculty organizing and collective bargaining.<\/p>\n \u2022 Takac drew a distinction between neutrality and non-interference, saying the administration is \u201cwell within their legal rights\u201d to advocate its position on unionization but should not interfere with the process.<\/p>\n \u2022 Faculty would be represented by SEIU Local 668. Julio Palma, an assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State Fayette who has been part of the organizing effort for six years, said unionization is \u201cthe only way to actually protect academic freedom, protect job security.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Provost Fotis Sotiropoulos called the upcoming vote \u201chistoric\u201d and thinks it is possible that flexibility for faculty \u201cwill significantly be reduced\u201d under a union contract.<\/p>\n \u2022 The Penn State Faculty Alliance alleges the university has \u201cincreased its anti-union messaging, designed to divide and confuse faculty.\u201d Andrew Read, Penn State\u2019s senior vice president for research, said during a town hall that he had \u201cserious concerns\u201d about unionization\u2019s impact on research, according to WPSU.<\/a><\/p>\n The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The office of the president in Penn State\u2019s Old Main on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. Abby Drey adrey@centredaily.com…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21087,59129,58197,28,30,20037,29,4732],"class_list":["post-126799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-centre-county","tag-faculty-union-election","tag-penn-state-faculty-union","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-lawmakers","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-seiu-local-668"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}