Over the last two weeks, students have eagerly returned to the time-tested traditions of their respective institutions as college campuses across the country have opened their doors for the autumn term. But while students in Madison have strolled down State Street and crammed into Camp Randall Stadium, Yale students have returned to New Haven’s more sordid tradition, one of strife between the university and its unions.
For the ninth time since the late 1960s, union workers in Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Locals 34 and 35 — secretaries and laboratory technicians, janitors and dining hall workers — have walked off the job to protest the inadequacy of Yale’s new contract offers. While the issues of past strikes have included equal pay for women, recognition of other groups’ unionization efforts and adequate safety equipment, this strike’s objectives are blue-collar bread and butter: better wages, better pensions, better job security.
Ironically, both the unions and the university administration agree that this strike is unnecessary. Naturally, their rhetoric differs substantially. On one hand, the unions insist that Yale offer wage increases that do more than simply match the expected rate of inflation. They demand pension plans that do not leave workers with 30 or more years of service to retire in destitution. They even concede Yale’s right to subcontract their jobs — to replace unionized workers with the employees of an outside firm, such as a temp agency — asking only that the university recognize its responsibility to displaced workers by reassigning them to other jobs on campus. The workers of HERE Locals 34 and 35 believe Yale can be an international leader not just in scholarship, but in labor relations as well.
On the other hand, the university touts the value of other benefits it has included in this and other contract offers, including health insurance, university tuition credits and financial support for those who wish to buy homes in some New Haven suburbs — benefits all won by the unions in past work stoppages. According to the university, the value of these benefits justifies the fact that wages lag behind even those offered at the local community college.
Additionally, the university fiercely protects its current right to subcontract jobs at will, a right it has used in the past to “punish” workers for striking by replacing them with outside, non-union workers. Recently, the university has even taken the divisive step of hiring mostly Latino workers to replace the mostly African-American union members out on strike, inviting racial tension into the dispute and drawing the condemnation of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. These are just some of many tactics Yale has employed to earn the ignominious distinction as the university with the worst labor relations in the country.
In its negotiation-table arrogance, Yale does a disservice not only to its unionized employees, but also to its students. As students, our sense of community has been tarnished. Our residence halls’ dining facilities have been largely shut down, staffed only two nights a week by subcontracted workers and non-unionized management. Our classes and extracurricular activities are held in struck spaces, forcing us to choose between our education and our consciences as we decide whether to cross picket lines. We are awakened each morning by drums and bullhorns as picketers rally support to pressure the university for a better offer. In short, every aspect of our lives at school has been disrupted.
But more importantly, Yale is doing irreparable damage to the city of New Haven on the whole. As the third wealthiest non-profit organization in the world and the employer of over a quarter of New Haven residents, Yale ought to be ashamed that New Haven is one of the poorest cities in the United States. Not only does Yale withhold adequate compensation from its own employees, but Yale also hurts blue-collar workers employed elsewhere in New Haven. The university’s market share of demand for labor dictates blue-collar wages throughout the city, and subcontracted workers at Yale itself lack the benefits, pensions and job security won by the unions.
In short, Yale works directly against the interests of New Haven in the name of lowering its bottom line. Though Yale is not in the business of urban development and social planning, neither should it build its own successes on the backs of New Haven’s working poor.
Contrary to the views expressed by some students in the national media, the solution to this current work stoppage is not to continue to tow a hard line against the demands of the unions. Nor is the answer to contain to intimidate workers with increased police presence on a campus already resembling a state of martial law. The end to the current strike — and the beginning of a new era in labor relations — will come only with substantive counterproposals from Yale and the settlement of just contracts.
William Strom is a Yale junior from Waukesha, Wis. He is a member of the Undergraduate Organizing Committee and majors in Ethics, Politics and Economics. He can be contacted at [email protected].
