Voting Begins In Yale Grad Union Election

After months of mass public demonstrations in support of a decades-long campus unionization drive, Yale graduate teachers quietly slipped into polling places across downtown to cast their ballots in Local 33’s first election since 2017.

That Yale graduate union election kicked off on Wednesday with voting at four Yale buildings in New Haven and Orange.

If a majority of the 3,000-plus eligible voters back the union effort, those Yale grad student-teacher-researcher-workers will be able to be represented by a union that can collectively bargain with their employer, Yale University, fulfilling the goals of a campus organizing effort that dates back to the early 1990s and that was recently revived under a more labor-friendly Biden Administration and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The ​“yes” or ​“no” question on each ballot reads: ​“Do you wish to be represented for purposes of collective bargaining by UNITE HERE LOCAL 33?”

The votes in this election won’t be counted until Jan. 9.

Wednesday marked day one of two consecutive days of in-person voting at the four local polling places, which include the Humanities Quadrangle at 320 York St., the Yale Science Building at 260 Whitney Ave., the Brady Memorial Laboratory at 310 Cedar St., and the West Campus Conference Center at 800 West Campus Dr. in Orange.

The NLRB-overseen election is open to thousands of Yale students who work as teaching fellows and research assistants at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Management, the School of Music, the School of Medicine, and in other professional degree programs. It is not open to teaching fellows at Yale’s Drama School, the School of the Environment, and a host of other campus graduate workers. (Click here to read a detailed breakdown of the complicated rules around who can vote, who can’t, and who can cast a contested ballot in the union election. And click here to read the rules for the election as agreed upon by Yale and the aspiring union.)

After being a member of a graduate teacher union during a prior stint at UCLA, Yale Law School third-year Greg Antill told the Independent on Wednesday, he saw firsthand how a graduate worker union is ​“instrumental in getting more healthcare and better pay” for its members. That’s why he voted ​“yes” at the Humanities Quadrangle Wednesday morning.

Yale Law School second-year Alice Wang agreed. ​“After hearing from friends impacted by Covid,” and particularly seeing how much of a toll the pandemic has had on Yale grad teachers’ mental health, she also voted ​“yes” on Wednesday. Having a union will help ​“get graduate students access to services in a timely manner,” she said in support of the union.

“I never thought I would see this day at Yale!” an anonymous 40-year-old anthropologist exclaimed after descending the steps from a Whitney Avenue polling station. ​“Since I first got here it’s been an ever present part of my life,” he said.

He has been studying and working at the university for eight years. He said the experience has been ​“isolating, individuating, hypercompetitive and precarious.” The recognition of a union, on the other hand, could offer an opportunity for students torn apart by academia to ​“come together and take care of one another.”

Votes Won't Be Counted Until Jan. 9

Wednesday marked day one of two consecutive days of in-person voting for the NLRB sanctioned election for Local 33, which is the latest manifestation of a Yale graduate union campaign that dates back to the early 1990s.

Eligible voters can cast their ballots at the four polling places listed above on Wednesday and Thursday between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. and between 4 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. A small selection of out-of-town eligible voters can send in their ballots by mail between now and Jan. 6.

According to regional NLRB spokesperson Kayla Baldo, the federal labor relations office won’t take a final tally of the Local 33 election votes until Jan. 9, 2023. 

So, while thousands of Yale grads are eligible to fill out and drop off their ballots this week, those teacher-researcher-student-workers and the university and interested New Haveners won’t know the outcome of this election until early next year.

“As the NLRB election commences today, we encourage every eligible student to vote,” Yale spokesperson Karen Peart told the Independent in an email comment. ​“Our hope is that all our students, whether eligible to vote in this election or not, will seek information about the potential advantages and disadvantages of union representation. Local 33 has identified areas of concern to graduate students. The university has made significant progress in these areas for our students in recent years, often in collaboration with the Graduate Student Assembly and the Graduate & Professional Student Senate. NLRB rules provide that the outcome of a union representation election is determined by a simple majority of those who vote, even if that number is less than a majority of the people in the bargaining unit. The results of the election bind everyone in the bargaining unit, including those who choose not to vote.”

Wednesday’s election day kickoff marked the first time that Yale grads have had a chance to vote in an official NLRB union election since 2017. That’s when Local 33 — which has received the support of the politically powerful UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35 that represent Yale’s clerical and blue collar workers — partially won department-by-department elections. Campus union organizers then engaged in a nationally watched hunger fast, and quietly withdrew their union-recognition petition from a likely labor-hostile NLRB under the Trump Administration in 2018.

A new cohort of Yale graduate labor organizers brought back to life Local 33’s campus unionization effort earlier this year with the hope that they’d fare better under a new presidential administration and national labor board.

With the help of local and state elected officials and UNITE HERE organizers, Local 33 has shut down downtown streets with thousands of demonstrators who have marched and spoken about winning a union in order to improve pay, healthcare, working conditions, and other benefits for their members. They’ve called on the university to remain neutral in the unionization effort. And, in late October, they officially filed a petition with the NLRB for an election for a bargaining unit comprising ​“approximately 4,000 graduate teachers and researchers.”

Mental Health. International Student Support.

“I think there’s many things that having a union would bring in terms of benefits for grad students,” 24-year-old Therese Cordero Dumit told the Independent outside of the Cedar Street polling place. 

The third-year immunology PhD student said she is hoping for stronger insurance coverage, higher stipends, greater access to mental health resources, and the hiring of mediators who could resolve conflicts between student researchers and the principal investigators who oversee their work.

She thinks the establishment of a graduate student union is her and her peers’ best bet to successfully enact some of those changes.

Part of her decision to vote was out of solidarity. Cordero Dumit said she knows plenty of students who have had to get their wisdom teeth out while in graduate school and either struggled to front the cost or been forced to reject medical advice.

Her personal experiences have also informed her desire to start and join a union. For instance, she said there is a serious dearth of therapists available to Yale students. She said that the university directs students to seek mental health support through an outside servicer called Magellan Health.

While suffering emotionally a while back from a string of deaths in the family, she searched for the Yale site which provides contact information for several Magellan therapists. ​“I called at least five,” she said — and the majority of them were no longer practicing. Simply updating the website, she said, could help individuals get the support they need in a more timely manner.

She added that regularly seeing a therapist has proved essential in recent months as she’s sought to better her individual working conditions. 

“One of the hardest things I’ve found about graduate school is being able to have direct communication with your supervisor and establishing boundaries around how much work you do,” she stated. Therapy has been integral in helping her practice those skills; but direct support from Yale, she added, to support students in negotiating with their bosses should also exist.

Physics student Mengwen, who declined to provide her last name, said outside of the Whitney Avenue polling place that she voted for the union in part to support all the ​“international graduate students not being very well taken care of” by Yale.

“We need a visa to study here but they haven’t been giving us instructions,” she said. Mengwen, who is originally from China, added that while studying at an American state school for her undergraduate degree she was provided with adequate instructions and support services to assist her in navigating the process of securing and sustaining a student visa. At Yale, she compared, she has received none of that same aid.

Richard Habeeb said that he voted in favor of unionizing because he also wants to support international students. The 30-year-old computer science PhD student and researcher said that in addition to ​“philosophically” wanting ​“a seat at the bargaining table as much as anyone else,” he knows of a Chinese student in his lab who is currently unable to return to the United States because of issues with his visa and therefore is not being paid by Yale while out of the country.

Like Cordero Dumit, he added that he wants ​“better pay, better protections,” especially dental insurance. ​“New Haven is expensive,” he said. ​“Dental care is expensive.” He said that other Yale unions, like Local 34, which is made up of the university’s clerical and technical workers, have secured dental coverage.

Habeeb’s friend, Jake Brawer, another computer science PhD, added that during his time studying at Yale he and his peers have indeed made strides in increasing stipends and earning better healthcare — ​”but because those changes are codified in anyway, they could revoke those things… and they’ve tried to in the past.”

A Yale anthropologist who requested anonymity has nearly a decade of experience attempting to negotiate labor rights with Yale.

He said that the biggest problem he’s currently facing as a graduate researcher has been adequate payment. He has taken longer than the average student to complete his degree — something he said he’s ​“a little embarrassed” by. Because completing his dissertation — an analysis on anti-Black urban planning — has ​“taken longer than the administration thinks it should,” he is no longer earning the graduate student stipend he was during previous semesters.

“I received my last full, generous stipend at the end of August,” he said. ​“I’m no longer supported going into my eighth year.”

Instead, he said he is teaching three courses, one at Yale and two at local community colleges, ​“to pay the rent and get by while I’m also trying to finish a dissertation and apply for jobs.”

“That’s too much!” he said.

A union, he said, might empower students to rethink what Yale and other universities have suggested their purpose within the system of higher education to be: ​“They’re supposed to be cultivating young scholars,” he said. ​“You’d think they’d wanna support us to the finish line.”

Talking To The Press? No, Thank You

After months and months of such visible, public pushes for a graduate worker union at Yale, many of those who turned out to vote on Wednesday — and especially those who have been the lead organizers of this latest labor organizing effort — time and again declined to speak to the press about the election.

Local 33 organizer and French PhD student Abigail Fields said she couldn’t talk and had to go to a meeting as she and a colleague rushed into the Yale Law School Wednesday morning. Asked about how she’s feeling today on such an important day for an effort she’s dedicated countless — and very public — hours working on, she said she was feeling good.

Another Local 33 organizer spoke with the Independent at some length about their support for the union. Then, at another union advocate’s expression of concern about talking with the press, they asked not to have their comments included in this article.

Still another Local 33 organizer standing at the corner of Prospect and Sachem Streets who was wearing pins proclaiming support for the union told the Independent that he couldn’t speak right then because it wasn’t a good time. He asked the Independent to speak with UNITE HERE spokesperson Ian Dunn instead.

Only a few signs announcing today’s election were posted to campus message boards downtown Wednesday. The only indication that 320 York St. was a polling place was a sign stating that this was a NLRB voting place where ​“no electioneering or loitering” was allowed.

In a Wednesday afternoon email to the Independent, Dunn provided the following comment, and included quotes from some of the lead Local 33 organizers.

“Across the country graduate teachers and researchers at private universities have been organizing and winning union elections,” Dunn wrote. ​“We look forward to joining tens of thousands of unionized academic workers and rolling up our sleeves and get to work negotiating our first contract. Yale grad workers are ready for pay that keeps up with the cost of living, healthcare that meets our needs and doesn’t drain our savings, protections for international workers, independent grievance procedures, and a seat at the table.”

Dunn included the following quote from Local 33 Co-President Ridge Liu: ​“This semester, thousands of grad workers signed union cards and said ​“union yes” because they want to win pay that keeps up with the rising cost of living, better access to mental health, dental, and specialist health care; protections for international student workers; and real recourse in situations of abuse, discrimination, or harassment. I’m thrilled to vote ​“yes” so we can negotiate a great contract!”

Wednesday’s election takes place amid a rising tide of graduate union organizing across the country. Earlier this year, graduate students at MIT voted to form a union by a 2‑to‑1 margin. And earlier this month, over 1,000 graduate student workers at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus went on strike for almost two weeks.