A Living Wage in New Haven

This past Monday, thousands of workers at Yale University went on strike. Janitors, dining service workers and maintenance workers joined with clerical and technical workers (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union Local 35 and 34 respectively), hospital workers (Service Employees Industrial Union district 1199) and, for the first time at Yale, graduate students, all walked off the job together.

The conditions facing Yale workers are appalling; they closely resemble the conditions of work at Harvard before the new wage and employment policies brought in by the living wage campaign. Workers, including those who have worked at the school for decades, receive poverty wages, haven’t had a raise in years and work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Their pension plan is inadequate and thereby discourages elderly workers from retiring. Yale service workers have no job security and are under constant threat of outsourcing. While wages and conditions at Harvard have improved, Yale still lags behind Harvard and other peer institutions.

Service workers had been in negotiations for over a year with the university, renewing their contract on a month-by-month basis, but Yale hasn’t changed its wage offer since last June. When the unions offered to enter binding arbitration in February, the school administration refused. This breakdown in bargaining, given the low wages and poor working conditions at the school, gave workers no option but to strike.

Students and professors at Yale must support the striking workers. The unions have made a good faith effort to students and have been careful to avoid overly imposing by not maintaining a constant physical presence at all classrooms. For their part, many professors have moved classes off campus. But even if conditions escalate, students and professors should expand their support for the workers and should never cross picket lines.

In addition to support from students and faculty, the strike has garnered hearty support from many New Haven residents and public figures. New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, several religious leaders, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 have all shown up to speak at events. We applaud this community involvement, which is extremely important in pressuring the city’s major employer.

The breadth of involvement in the strike is quite impressive. The workers are showing true solidarity and commitment by striking together—spanning different unions and job types, crossing language barriers. But the unions on strike are indeed involved in similar fights for respect and recognition from a school intent to nickel and dime its employees. This coalition of workers, along with the support of students and the community, poses a powerful impetus for change among Yale’s administration.

The graduate student strike is particularly noteworthy. They are striking simply to get Yale to recognize their union. As it stands, graduate employees have no say over their hours, work level or treatment by professors. Union recognition, an acknowledgement of graduate students’ right to organize, would give the graduate student union a voice in deciding their pay and working conditions and more authority in reaching out to potential union members.

The current strike is part of a long history of labor strife at Yale, and comes as the eighth strike in the past 35 years. Hopefully the school can get it right this time. Yale workers need a living wage and good working conditions. If Yale is insensitive to appeals to its decency and morality, it should at least recognize the need to avoid future conflict.