At MLK Rally, Labor Marks Grad Union Win

Days after Yale graduate student-workers officially won union recognition in a landslide election, a local labor coalition celebrated that victory while rallying in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s vision of working class justice.

One hundred New Haven Rising and UNITE HERE labor organizers and allies filled the pews of Varick A.M.E. Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue Monday evening for that annual MLK Day event. While attendance was capped for the purposes of social distancing, an additional 200 attendees watched on Zoom.

The group gathered for New Haven Rising’s annual ​“Keeping King’s Dream Alive” rally, during which local labor leaders and rank and file union members and union-supporting elected officials remembered the words and work of Dr. King while reflecting on another year of union activism in New Haven.

Dr. King ​“didn’t do a good thing one time,” said Stephanie Greenlea, the executive assistant to UNITE HERE’s secretary treasurer. ​“He didn’t do a hard thing one time.”

In Greenlea’s eyes, the election to give Local 33 negotiating power on behalf of Yale graduate students culminated 30 years of doing hard things — of not simply organizing standalone protests, but also of building activism into the daily rhythm of life.

Greenlea participated in the latter 17 of those 30 years of graduate student organizing. She pursued a PhD in African American studies and sociology at Yale before getting a job working full-time in the labor movement. 

During that time, Local 33 fought for better employment conditions for students, Greenlea said on Monday night — for ​“work with dignity, fair wages, respect” — while agitating in solidarity with workers across the university and for city residents affiliated with Yale — for ​“a neighborhood that is safe, a community that is thriving, a planet that is healing.”

All of that built up to last week’s election results tallying, when the federal National Labor Review Board determined that ​“91 percent of graduate workers voted ​‘Union Yes,’ ” as Local 33 member and Yale genetics researcher Arita Acharya touted about the 1,860 – 179 election win. ​“Just a few hours later, Yale sent out a message agreeing to sit down with us.”

Acharya expressed hope that the new union would ​“push Yale to be a better employer and a better neighbor.” 

“Local 33 has been fighting with working people every step of the way,” said Hill Alder Ron Hurt.

Speaker after speaker — from State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney to newly elected State Treasurer Erick Russell to Local 34 member Brittiany Mabery-Niblack — hailed Local 33’s election victory as an example of a thriving labor power movement in New Haven.

Other recent victories and tragedies saturated speakers’ remarks over the course of the evening, as well.

Martin Looney celebrated the passage of a ​“captive audience ban” in the state legislature. That law forbids employers from requiring workers to sit through meetings related to religion and politics, including anti-union presentations.

Looney recounted his own father’s experience with ​“captive audience” meetings as a factory worker at the Winchester Arms plant. He said that managers aimed to quell union activism by threatening that union involvement would jeopardize immigrants’ citizenships and potentially close the factory.

Erick Russell took a moment to remember Quentin ​“Q.” Williams, a Democratic state representative from Middletown who died in a car crash earlier in January. Q was a friend and fraternity brother to Russell.

“Q., like Dr. King, was 39 when he passed,” Russell said. ​“He did so much work, but there was so much work left in him.”

Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock made an appearance via video Monday night, after winning a close campaign boosted by UNITE HERE and New Haven Rising volunteers.

And Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers spoke of a need not to be complacent with the wins that UNITE HERE and New Haven Rising commemorated.

“We do everything we can to move the needle a little bit, but it’s never enough,” Walker-Myers said. ​“Yes, it’s good we got Yale to give more money” in its annual contribution to the city, that the university is sitting down with graduate union organizers, she said. But, decades after King’s death, Black and brown neighborhoods in New Haven are still dealing with crises that don’t penetrate the historically white university’s walls.

“Poverty is killing us in our city. We got Black kids dying in the street,” Walker-Myers said, alluding to a recent wave of gun violence that affected her own family, among many others. ​“We’re losing people. We can’t keep sitting back like it’s normal.”