Yale's Graduate Union a Model for other students
By Alison Rousseau
YDN Staff Reporter
From the beginning of the century, solidarity has been at the crux of industrial unions' successes.
In the 1990s, unions of white collar workers have been the new types of unions, but national support is still the critical component of their development.
It's no different for graduate student unions.
Yale's Graduate Employees and Students Organization is mirroring a national trend of increasing prominence for graduate school unions. As GESO is plowing ahead with a union card drive this fall, other graduate student unions across the nation are also faring well, indicating that graduate student unions are on the upswing.
GESO has had an active decade-long life span, peaking with its grade strike in the winter of 1995-1996. Although the strike led to greater national visibility and support for GESO, it also tarnished the graduate students' relationship with Yale.
Since then, GESO's goal has been to increase its strength on campus and to promote its views among the graduate student body. Presently, its momentum is again approaching the 1995-1996 level as it prepares for a union election this winter.
GESO is continuing to demand a contract between graduate students and the University, but Yale administrators are still adamantly opposed to it.
Over the past few years, however, Yale's administrators have systematically -- but subtly -- addressed GESO's concerns, carefully dealing with graduate students' complaints while emphatically speaking out against unionization itself.
Two summers ago, GESO selected a few key issues to include in a survey of graduate students, including health care, teacher training and accessibility -- issues that Yale had refused to address.
But beginning last spring, Yale began to announce a number of initiatives that improve the quality of life for graduate students. Last spring, Yale announced the new position of director of teacher training. And discussions about an Office of Multicultural Affairs -- a key aspect of accessibility -- are underway.
And when Susan Hockfield, the new dean of the graduate school, took over on July 1, Yale made more dramatic improvements. In August, the University altered its health care policy by deciding to fully fund hospitalization and specialized care of graduate students and to pay half the cost of funding primary and specialized care of their spouses and dependents.
However, in an email to the graduate school community, Hockfield made it clear that she believed GESO played no role in this change.
Yale's most visible difference in its treatment of graduate students was the creation of the McDougal Center last year. Stationed in the Hall of Graduate Studies, the Center's goal is to meet the needs of graduate students on many levels -- from providing options as basic as the Blue Dog Cafe to services as crucial as job guidance at Graduate Career Services.
But through all these changes, the graduate school has maintained its stance that a graduate student union is not the answer. Hockfield said she believes unionization would only have a very negative impact on graduate student life. She added that it is important that people at all levels of Yale discuss the issue of unionization, but the University will not recognize GESO as a union based on its union card drive.
But despite the University's opposition, labor organizers said they feel GESO is in a strong position for victory.
"GESO's been very, very effective," said Tamara Joseph, an organizer for the American Federation of Teachers and a GESO founder. "GESO I has developed an organizational model that is exceptionally effective."
Joseph said although the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin-Madison are the two oldest graduate student unions in the country, they relied upon GESO's model when they decided to restructure. She added Wisconsin's union membership doubled from 30 percent to 60 percent of graduate students after adopting GESO's method -- an organized infrastructure combined with an active and aggressive leadership.
There are currently 12 legally recognized graduate student unions across America and dozens of other groups that are trying to organize -- but nearly all of these movements are at public universities.
The key difference between Yale and most other campuses with unionizing graduate students is that Yale is a private university, while the others are mainly public institutions.
Union organizers said public universities' behavior is checked by state taxpayers, no one holds private universities such as Yale accountable.
"The struggle at Yale has reached historic proportions for graduate student unions," said Wes Beal, an organizer for the University of Kansas' Graduate Teaching Assistants' Coalition. "Yale can pursue any methods they choose and taxpayers aren't going to hold Yale responsible. GESO has been up against that since day one."
Another crucial difference produced by this public-private dichotomy is that while public universities are governed by state laws, Yale's union activity is regulated by the National Labor Relations Board.
Although graduate students and New York University are beginning to organize, GESO's dispute with Yale is the only student-university case that is in the national legal system right now. Joseph said any decision in favor of GESO will set the trend for other private universities across the nation.
The University of California system is currently a hotbed of labor unrest. Seven of the eight UC campuses have unionized and plan to strike later this fall if the University continues to refuse to recognize the unions. Labor leaders are also watching the University of Minnesota, where students are in the middle of a organizational drive.
The Coalition of Graduate Employees Union is the most prominent national organization that unifies graduate students. Each year, it sponsors a national conference that brings students both from established unions and from groups that are trying to organize.
"[The conference] helps to see other people in the struggle and to give them a sense of hope," said Jos Sentmanat, an organizer on staff with the Teaching Assistants Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which was the location of this year's conference.
Sentmanat said TAA represented 68 percent of graduate students last spring, but because of turnover, the current percentage is closer to 50 or 60 percent. He added TAA is at its high point right now and has never before garnered so much support.
At the University of Kansas, the Graduate Teaching Assistants' Coalition has a 25 percent membership base. The organization ratified a contract in August 1997 and, in the remainder of the three-year interim before bargaining begins again, is trying to maintain its current status.
Jon Curtiss, an organizer of the Michigan Federation of Teachers and School Related Personnel, is currently working at Wayne State University in Detroit. He said graduate student unions across the nation are prospering by building on the experience and support of other organizers.
"There has been a consistent effort over the past five years to work together as a national movement and as a community of people across the country," Curtiss said.
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This page was last updated on: November 5, 1999 |
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Graduate Employees and Students Organization |
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