PHILADELPHIA ÷ The National Labor Relations Board gave University of Pennsylvania graduate students the right to hold union elections in a decision announced Thursday.

The decision will direct an election supervised by the NLRB in early 2003 for certain groups of graduate students to decide whether or not they will be represented by a union in contract negotiations with the university.

The announcement came more than seven months after hearings ended between the University and Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania in late April, and a year after GET-UP initially filed a petition for an election with the NLRB in December 2001.