Yale Grad Union Preps Return To The Streets

After several years of hibernation, UNITE HERE Local 33 is back — ready to re-block some streets and resume a decades-long push for a union for Yale’s graduate students, teachers, workers, and researchers. 

This latest effort to win a Yale graduate student teacher union received needed public permission for that reemergence Monday night during the latest regular bimonthly meeting of the full Board of Alders. The in-person meeting took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

Without discussion or debate, alders voted unanimously in support of a resolution approving various street closures and backing related special event permits necessary for a rally that UNITE HERE Local 33 has planned for April 27.

Specifically, the resolution authorizes the closure of Prospect Street between Grove and Edwards Streets and the closure of Hillhouse Avenue from Sachem to Grove Streets from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on that day.

“Local 33 is leading a campaign to win a union of graduate workers at Yale University,” Local 33 Co-Presidents Paul Seltzer and Ridge Liu wrote in an April 4 letter to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers in support of the street-closing resolution.

“Most of these graduate workers are New Haven residents, and many leaders of Local 33 have long participated in campaigns to move our city forward. The success of our campaign will be that graduate workers have a democratic voice in their workplace and it will provide the opportunity to negotiate collectively of the terms of our employment. Over the past few years, Local 33 has stood with the residents of New Haven in calling on Yale University to contribute its fair share and provide New Haven residents with fair opportunities to get good union jobs at Yale. Local 33 also stood in support of Local 34 and Local 35 as they negotiated their contracts with the University.”

In that same letter, Liu and Seltzer described April 27’s planned rally as ​“the first public action in our campaign” to win a graduate teacher union.

Three Decades & Counting

The upcoming planned rally — and the alders’ Monday night vote of support — signals the resumption of a public union organizing effort among Yale graduate student teachers that dates back to the early 1990s. 

That effort first took the name of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO). In 2016, it rebranded as Local 33, linking the graduate student teacher effort with the larger union that represents Yale’s blue-collar workers and office and research workers.

After a spate of high-profile public actions and demonstrations in 2016 and 2017 — including a nationally watched hunger fast and a partially won election — Local 33 quietly withdrew a union-recognition petition from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in February 2018, fearing a labor-hostile decision from that board under the Trump Administration. 

Asked for why Local 33 has decided to renew its graduate union organizing efforts now, Seltzer told the Independent by email that there are ​“tens of thousands of unionized graduate workers in the U.S., including at Yale’s peer institutions Harvard, Columbia, and Brown. Grad workers at these three universities have all recently won contracts that raise wages, improve healthcare, and create stronger grievance procedures to address discrimination and mistreatment.” He also pointed to recent successful grad student teacher union campaigns at MIT and Fordham.

And he said that, on April 27, Local 33’s rally will ​“celebrate that a majority of graduate workers in the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences want a union.”

Asked for the university’s take on the imminent resumption of Local 33’s union organizing efforts, Lynn Cooley — a genetics and biology professor who is also the dean of Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences — said, ​“It has long been Yale’s firm belief that its graduate students are primarily students, who come to Yale to learn how to be scholars and teachers, and that Yale faculty serve first and foremost as teachers and mentors rather than employment supervisors. In its 2016 Columbia University decision, the National Labor Relations Board recognized graduate students at private institutions as employees under the National Labor Relations Act. Now as always, we encourage open and robust discussion on the topic of graduate student unionization, with respect for everyone’s viewpoint.”

Decker: "As Workers, They Deserve A Union"

While no alders spoke up before Monday night’s vote on the street-closing resolution, East Rock Alder Charles Decker did urge his colleagues to attend April 27’s rally and back Local 33’s organizing efforts, during a brief set of remarks in the more informal ​“points of personal privilege” section of the end of the meeting.

“Folks who have been here for a minute know that it’s a call near and dear to my heart,” Decker said. 

That’s because he used to be an organizer and a vice-president for Local 33 when he attended and worked at Yale. Decker was also one of the original participants in 2017’s hunger fast in support of the graduate student teacher union.

“Right now, they’re making a serious push to win a union for all,” Decker said at the end of Monday night’s meeting. ​“And this is happening in a context of grad workers around the country fighting for and winning their union rights.”

On April 27, he said, ​“I’m excited to stand with some of my former colleagues in Local 33 as Local 33 members declare publicly and in great number that the work that they do for Yale and at Yale is work, and as workers, they deserve a union.”