After more than three weeks of a divided campus community, disruptive picketing and adamant demands for higher salaries and better pensions, Yale University and its two main unions have settled labor-relation issues with a new eight-year contract.

As part of the settlement, which will cover approximately 4,100 employees, wages will increase between 3 and 5 percent annually. In addition, pension benefits will nearly double.

The agreement will go into effect immediately and extends back to January 2002, when the old union contracts expired. It will remain intact until January 2010.

Yale University spokesman Tom Conroy said the extensive amount of time the contract covers will help both the union and administrators to effectively deal with issues that have plagued the university many times in the past.

“It gives the university a period of time to improve [relations] with unionized work forces and ensure more effective teamwork,” he said. “That contract will certainly achieve that.”

Despite this retroactive reach, employees will only receive two-thirds of the pay raises in the retroactive period, with a minimum payment of $1,500.

Nonetheless, the agreement brought the nearly 2,000 dining hall, maintenance and clerical picketers back to work Sunday.

For Yale sophomore Josh Eidelson, who has worked with the Undergraduate Organization Committees to educate fellow students about the strikes, the new contracts represent progress on various fronts, something the campus community is gladly accepting.

“Decent contracts are vital to create a university community I want to live in. It’s safe to say there is a tremendous sense of relief on both sides” he said. “Everybody that I know is glad to have a sense of peace in the immediate sense.”

Nonetheless, Eidelson feels that for labor relations to improve, the New Haven community, administrators and union members must all take progressive steps together.

Although he feels Local 34 and 35 could have been handed more benefits, he still sees the contracts as “a positive show of greater faith in a foundation of future progress.”

Conroy also sees the settlements in a similar light.

“Every time you achieve a contract that both sides agree is a fair and reasonable arrangement, you include chances [for] more harmonious relations in the future. We’ll go from there,” he said.

Conroy hopes such prospects will help dissolve problems that may lead to a repeat of past labor issues between administrators and union members.

The strikes came to a head last week when over 5,000 strikers and supporters staged a four-hour demonstration in the New Haven city center. As a result, nearly 125 people, including national union leaders, were arrested for charges of civil disobedience and for blocking traffic.

Such criminal intervention did not deter strikers, however, because unions throughout the nation picketed the offices of the Yale trustee board last week.

Eidelson noted that student sentiments also manifested into similar acts of frustration. He said students wearing shirts that said “Democracy means freedom from intimidation” were threatened with arrest last Thursday.