Yale graduate students join union strike

Expecting impenetrable picket lines and large-scale disorder to their daily routines, students at Yale University have been only minimally disrupted by the strike of the Federation of Hospital and University Employees at Yale University. Graduate students, including teaching assistants, are among the employees striking and aim to gain collective bargaining rights by working themselves into the established unions' contracts. The strike "kind of fizzled," Yale sophomore Alden Bass said. "There really aren't any picket lines.... I expected at least... what you read about or see on television, but it just wasn't as eventful as I expected." The strike -- which featured a demonstration march through New Haven attended by Jesse Jackson yesterday afternoon after the day's picketing -- is scheduled to continue through Friday, until Yale's two-week long spring recess. Bass added that "some of the classes were interfered with a little bit because graduate students aren't teaching them," and that, as all of Yale's campus dining operations are unstaffed and shut down, students have had to scrounge for food at local supermarkets and retail venues. Yale has issued reimbursement checks, equivalent to the value of the lost meals. The FHUE includes Locals 34 and 35, representing clerical and technical employees and service and maintenance employees, respectively. The striking body also includes the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, a union organizing committee, and District 1199, an organizing committee seeking to represent employees at Yale-New Haven Hospital. "Our goal this week is to have the university operate fully," Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said. "Classes go on, and we're meeting that goal." Far from the iron display of inter-union solidarity many expected, according to third-year Yale political science graduate student Matt Glassman, yesterday's poor turnout and low morale were evidence of a "disconnect between the leadership of the unions and the rank and file." "I support Local 34 and 35, and I went out in the morning with some doughnuts and coffee to give to the picketers," Glassman said. "I literally had to search for them." "Based on what I saw today, this is not going to be a long strike," Glassman added. Yale students are no strangers to dining hall closures or strikes. Attempting to secure a commitment from Yale President Richard Levin that the university would waive its right to appeal a regional National Labor Relations Board director's ruling, GESO organized a grade strike -- in which grades were withheld from undergraduate students -- at the end of the winter semester between 1995 and 1996. Union officials insisted that the current strike was not exclusively an attempt to gain GESO and District 1199 collective bargaining rights by working them into the established unions' contracts. "The rally is to support good union jobs and access to good union jobs," FHUE spokesman Bill Meyerson said. "We have not backed down from our support for a free and fair process [for GESO], but there are other contract issues." Meanwhile, some said that linking GESO recognition to the contract negotiations was the primary reason why Yale was unwilling to accept FHUE's terms. "Were it not for that linkage, we believe we would have had a contract a long time ago," Conroy said, adding that the GESO question is a "main obstacle to an agreement." "The only possible end to this strike is GESO gets knocked off the table," Glassman said, adding that if the other unions "get the economic stuff settled, I can't imagine they'll hold out to GESO for one minute." Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures Cyrus Hamlin expressed concern over the melding of GESO and union interests up to this point, saying that "what the graduate students are trying to achieve is so different from the legitimate needs of the workers in the union that, in my opinion, it's totally inappropriate to combine" the two. Yesterday, Jackson drew a large crowd, but Glassman noted that the reverend's remarks were "really off-message." "He had some anti-war stuff, some anti-Bush stuff," Glassman said, adding that the activist left the "crowd wondering what he was doing." A rally at Yale's medical center, featuring Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, is planned for today.

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