Grad Union Reaches Tentative Contract Agreement With Yale

Yale’s graduate teacher and researcher union has reached a tentative agreement with the university, which, if approved by a majority of its members, will grant the union its first ever contract — and will see PhD students receive at least 15 percent pay bumps and dental care, among other provisions.

On Friday afternoon, UNITE HERE Local 33, the graduate worker union that won recognition as Yale’s graduate union this January, announced on X, formerly Twitter, that it had come to a full tentative agreement with Yale.

In a follow up joint statement issued to the Independent, a UNITE HERE spokesperson and Yale spokesperson confirmed the reaching of this tentative accord. If approved by the union’s members, the deal would mean that, after thirty years of organizing, graduate student workers will work under a union-negotiated agreement at Yale University.

The ratification vote for the contract will take place on Friday, Dec. 15, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturday, Dec. 16, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to a 20-page summary of the contract obtained by the Independent.

According to estimates from when graduate workers voted to unionize, there are about 3,200 graduate workers represented by Local 33.

If approved, the contract would go into effect upon ratification and expire on July 31, 2028.

“On December 8, Local 33 – UNITE HERE and the university reached a tentative agreement on a five-year contract — an important milestone in our relationship,” UNITE HERE New Haven spokesperson Ian Dunn and Yale spokesperson Karen Peart wrote to the Independent in a comment on Friday.

“As a next step in the bargaining process, graduate workers will have the opportunity to vote to ratify the contract. The university and Local 33 UNITE HERE will share additional information, including the contract’s provisions, as the ratification process moves forward.”

As part of the contract, the university has agreed to continually recognize Local 33 through 2031, meaning that Local 33 will be able to negotiate a second contract, even if a Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board decertifies or takes action against university unions. 

In 2004, the NLRB decertified graduate worker unions at private universities, and the Obama-era NLRB reestablished graduate worker unions. The Trump-era NLRB tried walked back those rights.

Local 33 has reached a first contract faster than graduate unions at peer institutions. At Harvard, the first contract took nearly two years to negotiate. At Brown, negotiations took 17 months, while at Columbia, negotiations lasted three years with a two-month strike.

Pay Raise. Dental Care. Grievance Process

Here is a summary of the contract, according a document obtained by the Independent on Friday:

PhD graduate workers, masters students and other graduate students who work as teaching fellows and research assistants will receive pay bumps across the board.

For PhD students in the Humanities, Social Sciences and physical sciences, their starting salary in Spring 2024 will be $48,300, which is a 19.2 percent raise from their current salaries.

Starting every Fall semester after Spring 2024, PhD students will receive a 2.5 percent bump through 2027.

For Ph.D. students in Biological sciences, their starting salary will be $49,800, an 18.5% bump. Management PhDs will receive a $50,000 salary, a 15.4 bump from the current salary.

Masters and other professional students who are teaching fellows will receive a 35 percent pay bump with a 2.5 percent bump every Fall semester through 2027.

Compared to Harvard, Columbia, and Brown — the other three Ivy leagues with union contracts for graduate workers — the salaries negotiated by Local 33 are higher. 

This year, Harvard’s minimum PhD salary is $45,696, Columbia’s is $46,680, and Brown’s is $43,791. Both the Harvard and Columbia contracts will end in 2025, while the Brown contract ended in June 2023. 

Effective July 2024, Yale will also establish a $300,000 per year Health Care Fund for graduate workers.

Effective October 2024, the university will offer an annual dental plan for PhD graduate workers and contribute 80 percent of the premium for a single PhD graduate worker. Starting in a PhD’s third year, Yale will pay 40 percent of the premium for dependents. The new dental plan will align with the Local 34 and 35 plan.

This is in line with the Harvard union contract. 

Full-time salaried Research assistants will have the right to a minimum of 15 paid days off per academic year.

The contract would also create a new grievance procedure, another major demand for Local 33 members. Through this procedure, workers will follow four steps.

First, they will meet with the supervisor and union steward, then they will file a formal grievance and meet with the union steward, supervisor, and university’s office of labor relations, then there will be a meeting with the union steward and the university’s director of labor relations. Finally, they will move to arbitration.

Local 33 first triggered this latest round of the unionization process in 2016, when the Obama administration reversed a 2004 NLRB policy that barred graduate worker unionization. 

At the time, Local 33 tried to unionize by creating micro-units where every department would unionize individually. However, when the Trump administration took over, Local 33 stopped the formal unionization process to prevent the Trump NLRB from decertifying all graduate worker unions nationwide. 

In September 2022, Local 33 triggered the unionization process again by filing authorization cards with the NLRB. A vote was then scheduled by the NLRB in December 2022, and after the vote count in January 2023, the NLRB certified Local 33.

Local 33 then formed a 16-person bargaining committee to negotiate this contract.