Fiery rhetoric at founding convention for new union of Yale grad students School says Local 33 ‘has no effect on the status of graduate students’

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NEW HAVEN >> After 25 years of on-again, off-again trying, graduate students at Yale University stopped waiting for the university to recognize their right to collectively bargain and instead held a founding convention to start a new local under Unite HERE, to push the issue forward.

Following two hours of marches and speeches from students, local, state and federal officials and union members in Local 34 and Local 35, Aaron Greenberg, 28, was handed a charter Wednesday for Local 33 to represent graduate teachers and research assistants in the arts and sciences at Yale.

Judge of Probate Jack Keyes, one of a number of elected officials who counted union cards last Sunday turned in by graduate students, said there were 682 of them, while U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro said it represented a majority of graduate students.

The number of graduate students they were trying to organize was not clear and Greenberg, who is a 4th year PhD political science student and the leader of the GESO fight for the past few years, said the universe of members is something that would be negotiated with Yale.

The university however, as well as a number of other private institutions of higher learning, continues to refuse to recognize its doctoral students as workers with a right to unionize.

That has been the position of the National Labor Relations Board, most recently since 2004, but that agency it is now revisiting the issue in a petition brought by the United Auto Workers to represent graduate students at The New School as well as an organizing effort at Columbia University.

Yale and eight other universities argued in an amicus brief that changing the NLRB policy will mean an inappropriate intrusion into academic decisions.

View of Omni Hotel room where more than 1,000 elected officials, graduate students and representatives from unions at Yale University met at a founding convention for Local 33 of Unite HERE Wednesday in hopes of negotiating with the university. less View of Omni Hotel room where more than 1,000 elected officials, graduate students and representatives from unions at Yale University met at a founding convention for Local 33 of Unite HERE Wednesday in hopes ... more Photo: Mary O’Leary — New Haven Register Photo: Mary O’Leary — New Haven Register Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Fiery rhetoric at founding convention for new union of Yale grad students 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

“HERE has always directed GESO, so officially branding GESO as Local 33 is not perceived at Yale as anything new or different, and it has no effect on the status of graduate students,” said University Press Secretary Tom Conroy.

Some 1,500 people pushed into a meeting room at the Omni Hotel at Yale for a high energy union rally that heard grievances from graduate students and high praise and promises of succcess from organizers who came before them on the rocky road to organizing workers at the university.

Decades of unrest there have been replaced in recent years with best practice bargaining and a structure of dialogue that has worked to sustain union peace.

Bob Proto, president of Local 35, which has been on the campus the longest, recalled the numerous strikes they called “just to stay alive.”

“Yale, even back then, was extremely wealthy and extremely powerful,” Proto said.

The union leader pledged his support for Local 33.

“I warned Yale University that they have to make a decision to do right by our fellow Local 33 or they will go back to the dark ages,” Proto said to cheers from the crowd.

He said Local 35 became stronger when his membership of tradespeople, custodians and food service personnel walked off their jobs in support of the technical and clerical workers who were organizing in Local 34 in 1983.

Proto told the crowd they are the strongest union at any private university and “that was not your (Yale’s) intent.”

“You have underestimated us for decades. Don’t underestimate us anymore,” Proto said to more cheering.

D. Taylor, the international president of Unite HERE, said the presence of DeLauro, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, Keyes, Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, and several state representatives at the rally showed who their friends are and “they are not with Yale. That’s a sign of where we are at here in this fight,” Taylor said.

He said he wrote a letter to Yale President Peter Salovey two weeks ago and told him of his intentions.

“I wanted to be absolutely clear. Our international union is going to stand 100 percent behind Local 33 ... it is long overdue. It is outrageous,” Taylor said of the lack of recognition.

“We have to make it very clear to Yale that this (the charter) is permanent. This is ongoing. This is never going to stop, until we get our day, until we get our contract,” he said.

Taylor said Unite HERE is used to long fights.

“Yale, I will say this, if you want to go back to warfare, we know how to do warfare. If you are smart ... you will recognize 33, you will negotiate fairly and we will have peace on the campus. They are not going to have peace until we are brought up all together, 33, 34 and 35,” he said to cheers.

Proto, after the speeches, was asked if he was willing to go back on strike if Yale continues to refuse to bargain with the students.

“No, no, what I am saying is that they shouldn’t underestimate us in regards to our commitment to the graduate teacher and research assistants. I’d like to maintain the same mode of problem solving that led us to two peaceful settlements of complex contracts ... If we roll up our sleeves and do that, we will be able to come up with a code of conduct and the guidelines for a no-intimidation vote for the graduate teachers,” Proto said.

“The leadership in Local 34 and Local 35 both want to sit down with Yale, as well as the leaders of Local 33 and work out a framework on how we can have a neutral election without intimidation,” he said.

The university says it provides “unsurpassed support” for the 500 doctoral students it admits annually.

It said its stipends and benefits for graduate teachers and research assistants range from $29,000 to $33,700 a year to meet living expenses.

No student pays tuition as the $38,700 cost is covered by a tuition fellowship, research grants or national and international fellowships.

The university says it pays for health care for all students and their families. “We know of no other peer school that does this,” it stated. A parental support and relief policy provides students with an additional semester and healthcare support at the birth or adoption of children, according to its policy.

In the 2014-15 academic year, it said the total spending for graduate student benefits was $158 million.

Yale said doctoral students teach less than at other institutions and over the course of six years no more than 14 percent of their time is devoted to teaching, which the university said is part of their training.

“We know of no other school that provides such generous support,” Conroy said.

Greenberg said they want to model any election at Yale on what students and the administration at New York University worked out that led to their recognition in 2013.

The ruling from the NLRB is expected fairly shortly, but Greenberg said they are not waiting for that.

“We are really ready and looking forward to sitting down with the administration. They have had two years this May. They know what we want and we are ready for them,” he said of the four rallies held over that time period.

“We’d like a private agreement, a private election,” he said. Greenberg said he was not talking about simply counting union cards.

He wants to negotiate what form the election would take, even if the NLRB determines that graduate teachers can organize. “It wouldn’t have to be the federal government,” Greenberg said of who would process it.

The students who addressed the large crowd complained about alleged sexism on the campus and were critical of the grievance system and a mental health system they said was unresponsive. They were upset that stipends are cut back after the 6th year in the program and want help with child care and wage equality.

One student said he had to wait two months to get a therapist and when he decided to switch practitioners, he had to go to the back of the line and start the in-take process all over again.

The officials asked to check the union cards against a list of graduate students besides DeLauro and Keyes were: U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Comptroller Kevin Lembo, Sec. of State Denise Merrill, Looney, New Haven Mayor Toni Harp, New Haven Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker, and the leadership of the New Haven Board of Alders.

DeLauro gave some background on labor history in New Haven. Not only did she help organize an administrative union in New Haven’s City Hall in the 1970s, she said Local 34 and Local 35 were organized in the basement of her home when she lived on Huntington Street.

“I know what it means to be an organizer,” she said.

“There is no reason why a great university and a strong union cannot stand side by side. ... I understand that you want and you deserve an election and a neutrality agreement and a code of conduct,” DeLauro said, that would govern that election.

Greenberg is asking that the university not run an aggressively anti-union campaign.

Looney, after the event, said the Yale administration made some of the same arguments back in 1984 against the establishment of Local 34 that they are making now.

They said it would undermine flexibility of management and its academic mission.

“You could reasonably argue that Yale is a much greater university now than it was in 1984. That fear proved to be groundless,” he said.