About Us

GETUP-UAW (Graduate Employees Together at the University of Pennsylvania – United Auto Workers) Local 5124 is the union of Graduate Research and Teaching Assistants at the University of Pennsylvania. The thousands of workers that make up UAW Local 5124 perform research and teaching essential to Penn’s educational and research mission.  

In May 2024, Graduate Workers at Penn voted overwhelmingly to form a union. Nearly two years later, and after 16 months of bargaining, Graduate Workers voted to ratify our first contract on February 27th, 2026. In ratifying our first contract, Graduate Workers formed UAW Local 5124, joining over 100,000 UAW members in higher education. We won a transformative first contract through years of organizing and majority participation, tools that we will continue to use to enforce our contract and negotiate another great one in 2028.