Grad-Teacher Union Gains A Toehold

Graduate student teachers in at least six — and likely eight — Yale departments voted to unionize Thursday, an opening victory in a longer quest on campus.

Twenty-five years after efforts began to unionize graduate students who teach courses at the university, elections took place in nine out of 50 academic departments on whether to form bargaining units under the auspices of UNITE HERE Local 33.

When the votes were counted Thursday night, the ​“yes” vote prevailed in six departments; the ​“no” vote in one; and the outcome pending in two others because of contested votes, but with the ​“yes” votes in the majority.

The vast majority of graduate students did not have elections in their departments. The fight now proceeds to whether Local 33 can gain enough support there to push for elections. (Yale failed to convince the D.C. National Labor Relations Board office to nullify the elections.)

“We’re really excited and humbled that after 25 years, we’re making history,” Local 33 President Aaron Greenberg said. ​“Graduate teachers have the opportunity to negotiate on the terms of their work.”

Greenberg admitted the physics vote was a ​“disappointing result.” He said he is excited for the other departments — and to take the next step on ​“properly sitting down with the university on issues that matter to us.”

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Dean Cooley downplayed the results in a statement issued Thursday night: ​“These election results demonstrate the extent of graduate student division on the question of unionization. Even with the micro-unit strategy that so many have criticized as being un-inclusive, the union lost one of its own hand-picked departments, and failed to clearly win two others, with opposition spread across the physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The slim margins of victory and very low vote counts in many departments only underscore the concerns many have voiced that a small number of students could be in the position to decide such an important question for everyone. The university is closely examining the outcome and will respond more fully in the coming days.”

Students in the English, Geology & Geophysics, History, History of Art, Mathematics and Sociology department Thursday voted to form the union micro-units. Political Science and East Asian Languages & Literatures are expected to join them shortly, but were as of Thursday pending due to ​“challenge” ballots cast by graduate students whose eligibility in the vote cannot be determined until after the election. Graduate students in only one department — Physics — ultimately voted against the measure, by a 30 – 26 count.

The voting took place Thursday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. and 4 and 6 p.m. at two locations across campus. Doctoral students in Geology & Geophysics, Mathematics, and Physics voted — and received results — at 135 Prospect St.. Graduate students from East Asian Languages & Literatures, English, History, History of Art, Political Science, and Sociology Departments voted and waited for results at Dwight Hall on High Street. At both locations, the voting was monitored by representatives of the National Labor Relations Board, which issued a2016 ruling on unionization of grad students at private universities that paved the way for the Yale elections.

Bittersweet Outcomes On Prospect

As polls closed at 6 p.m., around 20 graduate students, friends, and spouses wearing orange Local 33 pins streamed into a small room at Founders Hall on Prospect Street, where a total of 84 students from Geology & Geophysics, Mathematics, and Physics had spent the day voting. Three NLRB representatives from the NLRB told both reporters and members of the public that photography and video of any kind were prohibited both in the room and the building at that time. Here’s a video of that announcement, taken before the vote. (The NLRB’s Office of Public Affairs has not yet replied to a request for comment about why it bans photography of government-supervised elections.)

When asked her name by a reporter, the NLRB official did not respond.

Photography prohibition notwithstanding, the scene had a certain cinematic sensibility. Students gathered at the back of the small room, linking arms in its harsh fluorescent light. Asked not to make any noise as votes were tallied and called, they gave each other small, encouraging squeezes and shoulder pats as departments were read off. Eight pro votes in Mathematics to three ​“no” ballots drew smiles and quick hugs. A razor-thin 9 – 7 win for Geology & Geophysics brought a round of celebratory, if still hushed, squeezes between colleagues.

And then came Physics, in which a total of 57 students (one ballot was contested) of an eligible 63 voted. What had been a warm celebratory mood now turned to a palpable anxiety as the ballot box was overturned, and a large heap of pink slips made their way into the tallying table. The room grew silent. Faces began to fall as an NLRB moderator read off a meditative stream of nos that lasted almost a minute. 

The moderator tallied the results, and then tallied them again just to make sure. As she announced the totals — 26 for, and 30 against — a cadre of students in the back of the room drew in for a hug, and emerged from it red-eyed and still in tears. When asked for comment on the vote’s outcome, one responded that it was ​“way too soon” to speak on the matter, and left the room with a few other students trailing behind.

Robin Canavan, a fourth year graduate student in Geology & Geophysics who is also the acting co-chair of Local 33, said she was able to talk, despite the tears running down her face and crying jags that left her momentarily unable to speak. She had joined the fight to unionize during her first year on campus, and had gradually watched it become a meaningful part of her life. Because she is not teaching this semester, she was unable to vote — but said that did not lessen the effect of the evening.

“I’m excited for us in Geology & Geophysics,” she said. ​“It really has been a long struggle to get to this day I always thought we would, I just never knew how, or what it would look like. It feels great that we won today … we can negotiate all the issues that people have talked about, the funding, mental healthcare. It’s the work of people who’ve graduated who I wish could be here today, and I’m thinking of the future students who will really be able to benefit.”

“The tears are for physics,” she said. ​“A lot of my friends are in physics. None of us come here to be organizers — we kind of learn. I think the best way to move forward and create the best union that’s representative of everybody is really try to reach out and talk about what’s important to them. I really think if we come together, especially in this political moment, I really think our chances of improving the conditions of our workplace is that much better.”

“I don’t know that I’ve thought that much beyond today,” she added of Yale’s appeal of the NLRB’s ruling. ​“I’m hopeful because our allies in the other Locals [34 and 35] have negotiated contracts successfully and recently and I really hope that the Yale administration will work with us s well.”

With that, she caught up with a few friends, and headed to hear the tallies at Dwight Hall. 

The Scene At Dwight

Another crowd of 50 gathered into Yale’s Dwight Chapel on High Street, watching quietly as a handful of NLRB officials counted the votes for six other departments — so quietly that you could hear the pop of the heater.

As results were tallied, students cried, grinned and hugged. After the final numbers came in, for the history of art department, the crowd broke into laughter and claps.

The issues that matter to Christine Olsen, a student in the history of art department, are fair pay and benefits. ​“I hope that we negotiate a killer contract for ourselves,” she said.

Neither Henry Clements nor Salonee Bhaman, two students in the history department, voted Thursday night. They’re not teaching this semester, but showed up to support their colleagues anyway. ​“We were voting for each other,” Bhaman said.

She said she hopes that contract negotiations will make Yale a ​“more equitable place” for people who might not find pursuing a PhD accessible otherwise. She especially cares about stronger mental healthcare and childcare benefits.

And while they ​“haven’t fully consummated the labor community in New Haven,” said Clements, Local 33 took one big step toward in joining Locals 34 and 35 Thursday night.

The Long Haul To Organize

Thursday’s elections were 25 years in the making. Since 1992, graduate student teachers at Yale have tried to win the right to organize a union. Until recently they did so under the banner of the Graduate Employees & Students Organization (GESO). Then they changed the name to UNITE HERE Local 33, an affiliate of the pink- and blue-collar unions at Yale.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered the election in a Jan. 25 ruling that sided with Local 33 in a dispute with Yale about whether such an election should cover just nine, rather than all, academic departments. (Click here for a full story on that.) Yale argued that all 2,900 graduate student teachers from 50 departments have common enough interests to constitute a single bargaining unit; Local 33 argued that each department has its distinctive issues and interests and merits its own union local. About 300 students were eligible to vote Thursday — only students in the nine departments, and only those who are currently teaching.

On Feb. 15 Yale filed a ​“request for review” with the NLRB’s Washington office appealing the New England regional office’s ruling on the ​“micro-unit” election. ​“In this case, Yale continues to believe that Local 33’s petitions for these nine micro-units are inappropriate, and that the Regional Director’s decision was incorrect and without precedent in higher education. The recent graduate students elections at Columbia and Harvard were school-wide elections,” stated Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy. On Feb. 22 the NLRB denied the request, in a split. vote.

A ​“Super Pro-Union” Nay

As votes trickled in earlier in the day, the decision to join Local 33 got a mixed reception from students, who have expressed over the past years both enthusiasm for and suspicion for the union and its potential leadership.

At Founders Hall on 135 Prospect St., a few students casting votes in the Math, Physics and Geophysics department elections said they had heard the union’s long-held rallying cry, and decided to pass.

One of them was Neala Creasy, a third-year doctoral student in Geology and Geophysics who has taught one semester per year since arriving at Yale for her Ph.D. Raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Creasy described herself as ​“super pro-union” when she’s arrived at Yale three years ago, and heard murmurs of a graduate student union. But then she did some research into how GESO was talking to students — and changed her tune. She was especially rattled by the decision that only graduate students who were teaching could vote. After ​“putting a lot of thought” into the decision, she cast a ​“no” vote on Thursday.

“It’s how they went about doing it,” Creasy said on exiting the Hall. ​“I feel like all potential teachers should be voting. It’s just a kind of gerrymandering.”

She paused for a moment on the word. ​“Yeah, gerrymandering,” she said. She added that ​“it’s very possible” that she would have voted differently had she known all of the students in her department had the ability to vote.

“I think it’ll be close,” she added. ​“Our department is small. It’ll come down to like 20 votes.”

William Thompson, a second-year in physics, seconded Creasy’s reasoning — and added to it. When he got to Yale, he wasn’t flatly opposed to the idea of the unionizing drive, he said. He’d heard about efforts at other universities and ​“was neither for nor against them;” he was encouraged by pro-union grad students who said that GESO would pave the way to better health care, more stable pay from the university, and smoothing frictional or exploitative relations between professors and their grad students.

But he was taken aback, and then frustrated, by aggressive recruiting tactics he saw from GESO representatives, he said. When they began invading the physics lab he shares with 13 doctoral and post-doctoral researchers — and refused to leave when they were asked to — he decided that joining the union wasn’t for him. It was the final straw in what he described Wednesday as ​“this rhetoric that they want people to feel empowered” that isn’t backed by concrete solutions.

“It’s not about voting for a union. I support unions. It’s about voting for Local 33,” he said. ​“I think Local 33 doesn’t have the best interest of grad students … the practice of some Local 33 reps, specifically coming into people’s labs and not leaving when told, demonstrates a lack of basic respect for graduate students. When I’ve talked to them, they create this rhetoric that they want people to feel empowered. Even last night, I was at a forum with the union president [Aaron Greenberg] where he said: ​‘we will vote on those things when we win unionization.’”

“But no one has said: ​‘Here’s our plan,’” Thompson continued. ​“I want them to say: ​‘Here’s our Plan A, and here’s our Plan B.’ Otherwise, I’m voting for an idea. They have not demonstrated that they are capable of having a concrete plan.”

“I don’t fault Local 33 for using that technique,” he added of the teaching-fellows-only policy for Wednesday’s election. ​“They want the union to win; this is the most likely way to have it win. But I do see it as a form of deception. They market this [the vote from 9 of over 50 academic departments] as a more democratic way to do things. If they would just say: We are fairly certain that we can’t win all the departments,” he would be more comfortable with the vote.

Humanities More Positive

Voters interviewed at the polls at Dwight Hall, who tended to come from the humanities, expressed more receptivity to the union drive.

Daniel Maggen, who is working toward a doctorate degree at the law school but teaches in the political science department, said unionization can benefit students in the professional schools who work as teaching assistants, especially since this demographic isn’t quite represented by the Graduate School Assembly. ​“We just work,” he said.

Haesoo Park, a student in the history department, said he planned to vote to unionize, weighing personal concerns (relating to harassment and intimidation tactics Local 33 has allegedly used) against the greater good of collective representation.

Ittai Orr, an American Studies graduate student who teaches in the English department, headed straight to the polls after taking an oral exam. ​“This was the greatest way to cap that off,” said Orr, who voted in favor of unionizing. One of his biggest concerns, he said, is the limited health care coverage provisions at the moment. Orr finds spousal health care prohibitively expensive, especially.