Online Contract Survey Available Now! December 7, 2011
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Fill out the new contract survey HERE.
UPDATE!!! Deadline extended until Friday, January 20!!
Unions, Community & Occupy New Haven March for Good Jobs & Safe Streets December 7, 2011
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Local 34 joined with our brothers and sisters in Local 35 and GESO, with other union members and with a wide range of community leaders, students, and members of the Occupy New Haven movement for a rally and march last night. Participants called for good jobs and safe streets, an end to foreclosures and the violence that has plagued New Haven this year.
About 1,000 people crowded in to City Hall at the beginning of the action
Speakers included Chris Garaffa from Occupy New Haven, LaToya Agnew of the New Elm City Dream, and Tyisha Walker, a Cook’s Helper in Commons Dining Hall who is the Secretary-Treasurer of Local 35. A video commemorated struggles for social and economic justice in New Haven and elsewhere.
Local 34 members at the rally at City Hall.
The New Haven Independent published a long story online with a number of great photos, New Haven Register posted a great story with video, and local news Channel 8 also covered the story.
The march stretched the length of Wall Street from Church to High Street
Membership Meeting Covers Successes, Discusses Contract Reopener November 2, 2011
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The UNITE HERE at Yale office, located within the First and Summerfield United Methodist Church, at 425 College Street, has served as a hub of union and community action over the years. That was true again on this past Wednesday, November 2nd. As Local 34 members filed into the church sanctuary to engage in discussions aimed at determining their interests in the upcoming contract negotiations, they were met by young people from New Haven, preparing to march to City Hall demanding more job opportunities for New Haven youth, and highlight how the lack of such opportunities contributes to the violence afflicting New Haven. Local 34 members signed petitions for the march organizers, supporting their demands, and a number of 34 members also went to meet up with the marchers at City Hall after the membership meeting.
Surgery Department Protests Layoff with Petition November 2, 2011
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On November 2, twenty Local 34 and 35 members in the Medical School delivered a petition to the Department of Surgery to protest the layoff of Jerry Irizarry, who has worked as a mail assistant in that department for 18 years. The petition was signed by over 90% of C&Ts in the Department. Committee member Sheila O’Toole explained the high level of concern among her co-workers to Department Chair Robert Udelsman and Business Manager Susan Riggs.
Local 35 Executive Board member Craig Green described how the lay off would affect the work in his area, handling mail for the Medical School. Local 34 Vice President Tony Lopes stressed a particular concern that management had referenced the new Epic billing system as a factor in Jerry’s lay off, and that the introduction of Epic next year could involve further restructuring of work for other Local 34 members. We will continue the fight to get Jerry reinstated with any needed training to handle changes in his work
Unions and Students Say to Yale: Bring Back Commons! October 28, 2011
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During lunchtime on October 28, over 100 students and workers attended a speak out to protest the Yale administration’s decision to close Commons Dining Hall for dinner.
Since 1901, the Yale community has gathered at Commons in the evening to share meals, friendship, and ideas with people from across the campus; in 2010, administrators made a decision to sacrifice Yale tradition for cost savings and close Commons for dinner.
Chanting “Bring Back Commons” between speeches, the crowd heard from a coalition of union members and undergraduates. Stuart Comen, a cook in Silliman College, held up his memorial T-shirt from the 1990s, the last time the Yale administration decided to close Commons. After a campaign led by students and workers, it reopened in 1999. “This decision threatens an important Yale tradition because Commons is the central social and meeting spot for the Yale community,” explained Stu, “for many of us, Commons is a special place. I even met my wife there.”
For others in the Yale community-graduate teachers and undergraduate athletes-Commons was often the only viable choice at night. “As a graduate teacher living in the Hall of Graduate Studies, Commons was the only option for dinner after my late seminars,” said Jenna Healey, a GESO member from the History Department, “Now we have to go to already overcrowded college dining halls.”
The closing of Commons has hit athletes and student groups particularly hard. Before the speakout, a group of undergraduates distributed leaflets to the parents on campus for Family Weekend. Jonah Quinn, a senior who leafleted and spoke during the demonstration, said that “many of my athlete friends can no longer meet as a team after practice because there is no space large enough except for Commons.” He added, “Like many others, my best memories at Yale happened in Commons over good food and conversation.”
Unions Join Solidarity March for Occupy Wall Street October 6, 2011
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On October 5, 2011, members of UNITE HERE at Yale joined with other working people and a number of labor unions to add our support to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has been demonstrating against corporate greed in lower Manhattan since September 17.
Members from UNITE HERE locals around the region and unions at other universities, including large groups from the Professional and Staff Congress at CUNY and GSOC at NYU, were among the thousands of marchers insisting that “We are the 99%!”
Employee Participation Meetings Open Communication About Work Challenges October 2, 2011
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Clockwise from top left: Local 34 Art Gallery members John Balash, Zsofia Jilling, Christinia Czap and Tom Phillips organized the EPM in their department.
Over the summer, more than 200 Local 34 members in 47 different central campus departments—from African-American Studies to Physics to the Shared Services Center–held Employee Participation Meetings with management. “We must speak up,” says Tom Phillips, Local 34 Committee member in the Yale Art Gallery, where almost every C&T signed on to a letter to the Director requesting a series of EPMs. “We started all our meetings by stating that we (Local 34 members) are working hard to do the best job we can, but when policy, budgets or managers force us to compromise the quality of work we do, then we must speak up.”
Local 34 Central Area Committee members Linda Hase, Mary Jane Stevens, Ann DeLauro, Joanna Gorman, Heather Lewis, and Jackie Bradley.
In response to three years of budget cuts and a series of reorganizations, hundreds of C&Ts took advantage of a useful but underused article in our Local 34 Contract (Article IX 1(b)) which gives the employees the right to call an EPM and then present ideas and discuss solutions on how to improve services. In many academic departments, explains Ann DeLauro, the Registrar in the Italian Department, the EPMs “have opened doors of communication between support staff and faculty and led to discussions about our departments’ autonomy and future ability to run as efficiently as they should without compromising the quality of work.”
For each EPM, the Local 34 employees in the departments created agendas that addressed real issues facing C&Ts: career path, shifting of work to students and other employees, decisions regarding restructuring, new positions, workload, and job descriptions, and understaffing from attrition and layoffs. Moreover, they offered real solutions, as Marcy Kaufman, Registrar of the History Department, heard in the EPMs she attended. “We have been able to engage with our Chairs, coworkers, and members of the administration,” Marcy said, “providing them with much-needed perspective from the point of view of the employees who actually do the work.”
Already these meetings are paying off: several staff who had taken on additional higher level work are getting Y payments and upgrades to E Level, Local 34 Committee members attend a regular Shared Services Steering Committee meeting to discuss ongoing reorganizations in the academic departments, and management in departments from 344 Winchester to Chapel Street are making commitments to improve training and to keep up communication.
If you would like to plan an Employee Participation Meeting in your department, please contact your Local 34 Steward or Organizer.
UNITE HERE at Yale A Big Part of Primary Victories in New Haven September 17, 2011
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Fed up with a political leadership unresponsive to the needs of working people, thousands of New Haven Democrats voted on September 13th for aldermanic candidates supported by a broad coalition of organizations, including UNITE HERE at Yale. Fourteen of fifteen of these candidates won their primary elections—some by overwhelming margins—in a stunning citywide call for change. With very few of them facing challengers in the general election in November, they are poised to take office in January.
Among those who ran were six leaders of our unions—Brian Wingate, Tyisha Walker, and Frank Douglass from Local 35, and Brenda Jones-Barnes, Adam Marchand, and Sarah Saiano from Local 34 (Sarah lost her primary). Dozens of members of our unions canvassed during the weeks before the primaries and turned out supporters to the polls on September 13th. It was the largest mobilization of union activists in local electoral politics in recent memory, both locally and nationwide.
Adam Marchand, who won a narrow victory in Ward 25 in the Westville neighborhood, attributed his success to the hard work of his team of volunteers, made up of colleagues from Local 34 and of neighbors from his ward. “We are now in a position not only to wish for a stronger neighborhood and a better New Haven, but to come together as a community and make it happen,” he said.
Stay tuned for updates on next steps for this group of leaders once they take office in January.
