New Haven Independent

Members of Locals 34 and 35 of the Federation of University Employees will vote on April 14 on a new three-year contract, a full nine months before the current one expires.

That in itself is a watershed at New Haven’s largest employer. The last contract at Yale was struck in 2003 after the campus endured its seventh strike in 34 years; experts considered the university to have among the worst campus labor relations in the country.

With the nation mired in recession, and layoffs about to hit Yale’s workforce, people in town worried about the prospect of yet another strike when the current contract expires in January. Both Yale’s administration and union leaders worked hard to avert that.

Instead, they achieved a pact that will be hailed as a milestone in a new era of cooperation.

Local 34 represents 3,300 office workers on campus. Local 35 represents about 1,300 blue-collar employees such as custodians and dining hall workers.

News of the tentative pact spread across campus Friday as shop stewards arranged meetings with members to discuss terms of the deal, which neither side has released to the general public.

The deal follows a six-year effort at building a new labor-management relationship at Yale. The two sides have developed labor-management committees throughout campus to hash out day-to-day workplace issues and build trust.

“There have been a lot of best practices that have worked” as a result, noted one pleased union organizing committee member.

Yale “has no comment” on the deal, spokesman Tom Conroy said Friday.

Union communications director Evan Cobb said the same.

“There is a tentative agreement. We are in the process of getting the details out to members” and will withhold public comment on details until the 14th, Cobb said.

People familiar with the negotiations said the deal will largely extend the existing contract another three years. But both sides sought and apparently won some changes.

• Yale was looking for new rules for when some Local 34 members can take vacations. New hires will receive less paid vacation than current 34 members and will have “floating holidays,” on a more flexible schedule for managers. That’ll put them in line with Local 35 members. Yale sought those changes because an increasing number of Local 34 members, such as medical researchers, work on a year-round calendar the way the blue-collar union workers do, rather than academic-year calendars, the way professors’ support staff do.

• Unions sought and apparently won strengthened job-security language. That probably won’t fully shield members from the effects of the recession; Yale President Rick Levin recently announced that the university is planning some layoffs.

(The image at the top of the story comes from a labor history mural at Troup School. Read about that here and here.)