Yale graduate students vote to strike, demand higher wages

and Tammy Polonsky Demanding higher pay, complete health benefits and more job security, graduate students at Yale University voted overwhelmingly earlier this week to go on strike the first week in April. In addition to the strike, which the Graduate Employees and Students Organization body approved 383-35, the teaching assistants will also discuss their issues with undergraduate students in recitations this month. Through these efforts, the graduate students hope to create a university-recognized union. Because every professor at Yale is required to teach, graduate students say they do not receive the treatment they deserve. According to Eve Weinbaum, a member of GESO, teaching assistants are payed less than the projected living expenses in New Haven, Conn. Teaching assistants with children say they have an even larger financial burden because Yale does not extend health benefits to their children. TAs also say that due to the nature of the university, there is little job security. At the beginning of every semester, Yale students "shop" for their classes before registering. As a result, teaching assistants often do not know whether they have a job until two weeks into the semester. University President Judith Rodin grappled with this issue during her tenure at Yale as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and as provost. But unionization of graduate students has not proved as controversial here at the University. Currently, a graduate student union does not exist, and many say they do not foresee the establishment of one. According to the University's Graduate and Professional Students' Assembly Chairperson Ari Brose, graduate students do not agree on whether to establish a union because there is no central source of funding. Health and other benefits are provided in some University centers, depending on which provides the funding for the individual graduate student, Graduate Student Association Council President Bronwyn Beistle said. "The source of funding can change during a student's education," Beistle said. "For example, I am now funded through Mellon but when I first came to the University I wasn't." Many graduate students said they are satisfied with their position at the University because their funding is adequate, while others are unhappy that not enough benefits are provided, Beistle added. Rodin said being a teaching assistant is an integral part of graduate education, and unionization is not appropriate. "I opposed and continue to oppose unionization by graduate students?," Rodin said earlier this week. "I believe that graduate students are fundamentally students and that being a teaching assistant is part of the training for being a Ph.D, since most of the Ph.D's we produce go into teaching." Daily Pennsylvanian Staff Writer Lisa Levenson contributed to this article.