Yale Unions Ratify 5‑Year Contracts

At a time when union-management clashes have grown nationwide, a different story emerged Wednesday night in New Haven: Yale’s two main unions voted to ratify new five-year contracts.

The votes, held at two outdoor locations in two parts of town, came on the heels of 16 months of intense negotiations — which spurred a massive UNITE HERE-led protest last spring.

Members of UNITE HERE Local 35, which represents 1,400 maintenance and service workers, gathered with folded chairs on the New Haven Green to vote on their contract.

Meanwhile, members of Local 34, which comprises 3,700 clerical and technical workers, arrived to vote on the contract on a grassy lawn behind the Yale Bowl in Westville. Most members participated from within their cars with windows rolled down. Those who stood outside wore masks, to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Westville Bowl Drive-In

Upbeat music blasted from a stage as a thousand drivers trickled in to participate. Once the meeting commenced, union leaders spoke on behalf of the contract one by one, stressing a host of new job protections that the contracts guarantee.

The vote to approve the contract was taken by voice, with people asked to respond as a group to approving or rejecting the pact.

The Local 34 contract includes a new ​“alternative placement” system for laid off employees, which involves a 90-day process for employees to transition to a different position with salary protection before their job ends.

This system ​“anticipates workplace changes on a wider scale,” said Beinecke Library Steward Amelia Prostano, alluding to technological developments that might compete with existing jobs.

Library and IT workers gained additional protections against having their jobs outsourced. Per the contract, Yale has to give a 90-day notice before subcontracting union employees’ work, and the university is required to negotiate their plans with Local 34.

Library employees had been worried about the threat of subcontractors for years, according to Prostano and fellow Beinecke employee Jennifer Garcia. Yale library administration had already announced an outsourcing initiative in 2019, Garcia said. ​“But we fought back.”

Lynell Graham, who helped negotiate for the first time this year, heralded a special victory for employees at Yale’s Coodirnation, Appointment, Referral, and Engagement (CARE) Center, which helps patients schedule appointments and communicate with their medical providers.

The new contract explicitly protects Graham and her co-workers from layoffs due to subcontracting.

For Graham, the fear of her job getting outsourced intensified when Covid-19 first arrived in 2020 and CARE employees began to work remotely.

“Working from home, it gives that threat — that anyone can be hired for this,” even someone working across the globe, she said after the meeting.

Still, Graham attested that she and her co-workers worked hard through the challenges of the pandemic. ​“We turned our dining room tables into desks,” she told the crowd, adding that her two kids learned the directions to various medical locations by heart as they learned from home.

When patients called panicking about Covid, Graham said, ​“we kept them calm.”

Ken Suzuki, the secretary and treasurer of Local 34, explained to the car-bound crowd that negotiators made concessions on raises and healthcare in order to win more job security.

Yale had proposed a 2 percent yearly raise across the board for Local 34 members, Suzuki said. He paused for a chorus of boos.

The union ultimately negotiated that number up to a 2.25 annual raise from 2022 to 2024, and a 2.5 percent annual raise from 2025 to 2026. That’s on top of an additional 2 percent raise each year for employees in their first 11 years at Yale.

Another concession was around members’ healthcare plans, which previously did not require them to pay premiums for medical visits covered by Yale Health.

“We had to open the door on paying premiums for Yale Health so that we could protect job security,” said Economics Registrar Pam O’Donnell. ​“Once that door was open, our goal was to keep costs as low as possible — and we won,” she declared.

Yale had approached the union with an offer of paying 10 percent of Yale Health visit costs, O’Donnell said. The final contract has a gradually increasing weekly premium rate that will reach $10 per week in 2027 for an individual, and up to $28 per week for family coverage.

After a voice call resulted in a ratified contract, not everyone was pleased with the outcome.

A couple of attendees, who said they work for Yale’s Animal Resources Department but declined to provide their names, voted against the contract. They said that since the threat of subcontracting doesn’t affect them, ​“We’re not happy.” They lamented having to pay fees for Yale Health services.

Isaac Bloodworth, a Yale Center for British Art museum technician who recently got elected to the union’s executive board, said that obtaining the contract was a hard-won fight: ​“It’s not fun dealing with an organization that doesn’t see your worth.”

Local 35 On The Green

Roughly 200 cafeteria workers, custodians, electricians, and other blue-collar workers at Yale filled the northwest corner of the Green at College and Elm Streets for UNITE HERE Local 35’s contract vote.

Sitting in row after row of white plastic fold-out chairs in the late afternoon sun, rank-and-file members listened to a nearly hour-long presentation and pitch by Local 35 President Bob Proto before casting their votes.

Proto laid out the key details of the five-year contract point by point. He gave his audience a brief history of the negotiating-table battles that took place between the university and the union before the two parties landed on the final proposed outcome. 

And he stressed time and again how Local 35’s contract benefits — particularly around job protection, defined pensions, health care costs, and attrition prevention — are some of the best in the nation.

“The reason why we have the strongest contract in the country is because we have custodians side by side with electricians and plumbers,” he said, ​“and electricians and plumbers side by side with cooks and groundkeepers and mail and utility workers.”

Add on top of that the 3,600 secretaries and clerical workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 34, he said, and that’s a full 5,480 people the unions represent at Yale.

“That’s the reason why we’re able to bargain decent contracts. It’s not like there’s a custodial union, a physical plant union, a utility union. Because if there was, they’d pick us off one by one. They can’t pick us off. I want to make sure folks understand that,” he said.

Some of the terms of the contract as detailed by Proto included: 

• A five-year term extending from 2022 to 2027.

• A 13 percent increase in wages over the five year term. That includes a 2.75 percent increase in January 2022, a 2.75 percent increase in January 2023, a 2.50 percent increase in January 2024, a 2.50 percent increase in January 2025, a 2.50 percent increase in January 2026. 

“For Yale to think that our folks are overpaid,” Proto said, ​“when they keep amassing amazing wealth, for them to even want to look at our pockets, is unfair and irresponsible of them as the largest employer in the region.”

• Medical premiums for fully covered Local 35 members that will increase to $5 per week in 2022, $6 per week in 2023, $7 per week in 2024, and rise to $10 per week in 2027. For a fully covered child of a Local 35 member, that premium will be $8 per week in 2022, $10 in 2023, and rise to $16 per week by 2027.

• The maintenance of the current defined pension plan for all current Local 35 members. 

• The introduction of a new choice for newly hired Local 35 members, who will be able to pick between opting into the current defined pension plan — which requires five years to vest into — or opting instead into the management matching retirement plan, which does not require as long of a time vest but pays out less in the long run.

• A retirement incentive that will pay out $1,500 per year of service to Local 35 members who are over 60 years old, who have at least 25 years of work service in their Local 35 jobs, and who retire between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2021. The next eligibility period for this retirement incentive will start in April 2026.

• A no-layoff clause.

• A one-for-one hiring mandate, which requires the university to hire for each employee who retires or otherwise leaves.

• Three categories of exemptions for the universities’ vaccination mandate. Those include medical exemptions, religious exemptions, and ​“personal belief” exemptions. Proto said that last option — the ​“personal belief” exemption — may ultimately get overruled by a new federal order that requires employers who get more than $250,000 in federal funds to only allow for medical and religious exemptions to vaccines. He said that 90 percent of Local 35 members are vaccinated already, but the 139 people who have opted out because of the ​“personal belief” exemption should be aware that option may not exist for too much longer.

Before the vote, Local 35 members expressed their enthusiasm for the new contract.

“Our pay raise,” 20-year facilities operations veteran Rhonda Greene said when asked about the best part of the new contract in her opinion.

She spoke of how much pride she takes cleaning hallways, entryways, bathrooms, and other parts of campus. 

“They know I keep them clean,” she said about Yale students’ responses to her work.

“We take pride in what we do,” said Local 35 Vice President and Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate.

Scott Olson, an 18-year veteran electrician who works at the medical school, said that the clause of the contract that mandates ​“direct replacement, one for one” is the best part of the contract.

For Guy Jeudy, the best part is the retirement incentive.

Born and raised in Haiti, Jeudy has worked at Yale for 40 years — just about the entire time he has lived in this country. Jeudy said that upon arriving in New Haven in 1981, he quickly learned that the best place to work was Yale. So he got a job as a custodian — and has subsequently risen to the ranks of a plumber, where he looks after labs at the medical school.

“I never was a part of a union before” getting his first job at the university, he said. ​“That’s part of life at Yale.” Jeudy said he plans to retire later this year.

Phillip Wayne Allen also cited the retirement incentive as the best part of the contract. He too plans on retiring later this year.

He’s worked at the university for 32 years, first as a dining hall staffer, now as a light truck driver.

“I love it,” he said. What’s the best part of his job? ​“Just being able to make the money we make.”