Yale Grads File For Union Election

Yale’s aspiring graduate worker union is one step closer to an election — now that it’s submitted ​“over 3,000” union authorization cards to a federal labor-relations office in Hartford.

That’s the latest with a three-decades-and-counting effort by Yale University’s graduate students, teachers, researchers, and workers to form a university-recognized union. 

According to a Monday morning press release sent out by Ian Dunn, who is a spokesperson for Yale’s UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35 as well as for the fledging graduate ​“Local 33” union, ​“Thousands of graduate teachers and researchers at Yale University signed union authorization cards that were submitted today to the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] regional office in Hartford today. This filing comes on the heels of successful union elections at many of Yale’s peer institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and MIT.”

Dunn later told the Independent that Local 33 dropped off ​“over 3,000” union cards in total. 

That’s significantly more than half of the ​“approximately 4,000 graduate teachers and researchers” in the prospective bargaining unit, he said.

Monday’s press release includes quotes from a number of Yale graduate student-teachers who helped lead a hundreds-strong march up Hillhouse Avenue, across Sachem Street, and down Prospect Street earlier this month in a public rally calling for the university to recognize the aspiring graduate union and to remain ​“neutral” in a coming election.

This latest unionization effort also comes after recent years have seen a previous Local 33 cohort hold a partially won election, engage in a nationally watched hunger fast, and then quietly withdraw a union-recognition petition from a likely labor-hostile NLRB under the Trump Administration.

“The work my colleagues and I do is essential to Yale’s educational mission,” Local 33 organizer and Yale French language teacher Abigail Fields is quoted as saying in Monday’s press release. ​“I’m organizing with our campaign to win a graduate union because I love the work that I do, because I care about doing it well, and because I know that to be a good teacher to my students, I need to be trained, supported, and paid fairly.”

Regional NLRB office spokesperson Kayla Blado confirmed for the Independent on Monday that the Yale graduate students-teachers did indeed drop off a union-recognition petition earlier in the day.

Per the office’s public reporting protocol, however, she did not disclose how many signed union-recognition cards the aspiring union submitted. She did, however, confirm that the aspiring union’s petition claims that the size of the bargain unit is ​“approximately 4,000” members.

That number will likely be contested by Yale University. Because, while the aspiring union is looking to hold an election among Yale’s graduate teachers and researchers and workers, the university may claim that the the number of Yale’s graduate students is actually much higher than the 4,000-person number submitted by Local 33 for the purposes of defining the bargaining unit size.

In an email comment sent to the Independent for this article, Yale University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote: ​“We’ve just received the petition and are reviewing it. As we’ve previously shared, Yale supports a free and robust debate over graduate student unionization among those who may be affected by it, including the graduate students who would make up its ranks as well as faculty and other students. Yale also supports the rights of employees to form unions. The university has worked closely with Locals 34 and 35 to reach favorable contracts, and over the years, we have built productive relationships with our union partners.” She also passed along this link to a frequently asked questions webpage on Yale’s site about graduate student organizing. (Click here to read an ​“annotated” version of that FAQ put together by the aspiring grad union.)

So. What happens next? 

Blado said that Local 33 must submit signed cards from at least 30 percent of the proposed bargaining unit in order to hold an election. It will likely take the NLRB regional office staffers a couple of days to determine exactly how many valid signed cards the aspiring union submitted.

After that, the two parties — in this case, the aspiring union and Yale University — must decide on whether they can agree on the terms of an election.

If they can, then Local 33 can move forward with a stipulated election agreement and hold an election.

If they can’t agree on the parameters of a union election, then the NLRB will host a hearing on the matter and the regional director from the Boston NLRB office will ultimately provide a written decision on whether or not there will be an election and on what terms.

Click here, here, and here to learn more.

“Local 33 now awaits a response from the Yale administration to our filing,” Dunn wrote in his Monday press release. ​“The university could also voluntarily recognize the union and we could get to work on a contract for graduate teachers and researchers.”