Yale students threaten to withhold tuition

Students are joining the labor fight at Yale University. Yale's Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) will announce today a plan to withhold 1996 fall semester tuition payments -- protesting the administration's actions toward unions striking on campus, locals 34 and 35 of the Federation of University Employees. The withheld payments will be put in an third party escrow account. When a strike settlement is reached, Yale will receive the funds, according to a SLAC press release. Also at the rally, SLAC will announce an upcoming meeting between students and Yale President Richard Levin to discuss the labor situation. Local 35 -- the dining hall, service and maintenance employees union -- is currently on strike to negotiate a new labor contract with the university. Local 34, the clerical and technical workers union, is also in the middle of negotiating contracts. The union returned to work March 6 after a four-week strike. This is not the first time students have withheld their tuition payments. In 1984 during a Local 34 strike, 115 students placed their spring tuition and fees -- totaling $390,574 -- in an escrow fund. At the time, Yale officials said the students would be suspended for nonpayment. According to Yale spokesperson Gary Fryer, nothing has changed in the strike situation. "The unions meet with the University once a week in totally unproductive negotiation sessions," Fryer said. Proposals have been put on the bargaining table by the University, but union negotiators have found them "particularly unacceptable," Fryer added. Student dining hall workers -- who are also on strike -- picketed for five hours outside of Levin's office Friday. But originally, students were told by administrators that it was illegal for them to picket on campus, according to Jon Zerolnick, one of the dining hall student organizers. Michael Doyle, the union's chief negotiator then sent to the administration a letter stating that the students would continue with their planned protest, as they would not be violating any National Labor Relations Board laws. In response, Yale administrators gave the students a permit to rally from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Zerolnick said. "That was not we asked for," he said. "What we alerted them to was that there would be a picket line and then they gave us this permit for a rally we weren't having." When the time allotted for Friday's rally had run out, Yale campus police told the students they had to leave the area. But the student organizers responded at the time that their role as students gives them the right to be on campus, Zerolnick said. "The implication was that because we are striking workers, we somehow forfeit some of our rights as students," he added.