UPDATE!!! Deadline extended until Friday, January 20!!

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

The march drew over 200 participants, and was held by an organization called the New Elm City Dream, made up of youth, community organizations, and organized labor in New Haven..  Marchers presented their petitions to U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro, Mayor John DeStefano, and a number of aldermen, including many of the newly elected alders from September’s primaries. The New Haven Board of Aldermen passed a resolution on October 24th, initiated by Alderwoman and Local 34 member Dolores Colon, supporting the American Jobs Act and jobs for youth.

One of the youth leaders, Capria Marks, said, “the youth of New Haven is waking up and saying that enough is enough, and we’re ready to make a change.”

Marching in support of demands is something that Local 34 members have a lot of experience doing. Inside 425 College St. on Wednesday evening, many who have marched in the past, as well as many new faces in the union, came together to begin working towards the upcoming contract negotiations.
The meeting kicked off with a recognition of the success of the political campaigns run this summer by a number of Local 34 leaders. Dolores Colon was joined by Brenda Jones Barnes, Sarah Saiano, Adam Marchand, and Evette Hamilton. All are Local 34 members who ran in the primaries in September. Brenda spoke of how exciting it is to have more working people on the Board now, and acknowledged the hard work done by the many Local 34 members who volunteered on the campaigns.

Pam O’Donnell and Ann DeLauro described the efforts of committee leaders in Local 34, Local 35, and GESO to increasingly combine their efforts to fight back against the increasingly corporate trends displayed by Yale administrators in the Central and Science areas in regards to layoffs, short-staffing, workload increases, job downgrades, and increased top-down decision making.

From the medical school, Catherine Brayton, a Local 34 research assistant from the Psychiatry department, and Kate Irving, a GESO member from History of Science and Medicine, talked of their joint efforts in the Local 34 project to reach out to Yale researchers at all levels, both inside and out of the Local 34 bargaining unit, in order to better understand the growing world of research at Yale, with an emphasis on understanding issues relating to funding and career tracks.

Yolanda Giordano, Recording Secretary of Local 34 and a medical biller in the Pediatrics department, and Mary Thigpen, medical assistant at Yale Health, spoke about a project currently underway as part of the Clinical Operations Committee, which is part of the Best Practices initiative. The project is focused on creating a career path for Medical Assistants at Yale. This group of approximately 80 staff members, is almost exclusively classified in Labor Grade C. The project aims to create a ladder to Labor Grade D, as well as address issues of training and certification.

The largest portion of the meeting was devoted to small group discussions focused on members responses to questions about hopes and concerns about the upcoming contract negotiations, relayed through the yellow cards that organizing committee handed out and collected back from hundreds of members around campus over the last few weeks. Groups of members filled the church sanctuary, intently discussing everything from wages to health care to desires for job advancement opportunities and, yes, parking. Thanks to the committees’ efforts and the members’ responsiveness on the yellow cards, members from all parts of campus were able to share with each other their perspectives. A note-taker in each group recorded the various points, which Local 34 leadership will compile to inform the creation of a membership-wide survey, slated for release in mid-November.

Local 34 Executive Board member, Jess Corbett of the Dermatology department, said, “coming off of our exciting political victory this Summer, the committee building program, and the energy in the membership meeting, I feel very excited about the upcoming contract and what we can accomplish.”

We can all look forward to much more activity at 425 College St. in the year ahead!

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

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.”

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%!”

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.

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.

Research assistants do widely varying work, from bench work in labs to visiting medical facilities and patients around the state who are participating in, or are interested in joining, Yale-based studies. In the interviews, research assistants expressed a great deal of pride in the work they do to expand the boundaries of scientific knowledge and to help improve peoples’ health and well-being.  But the interviews highlighted a number of common difficulties, including the instability of grant-based work, the obstacles and lack of transparency around opportunities to grow and advance, and isolation.

Research assistants Naa Sackey, Maurice Williams and Suzette Benitez participated in the Research Survey Program. They work at the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) on projects in the community and schools that address the three primary risk factors for chronic illness: exercise, diet and tobacco use.

Over the coming months, we will be culling interviews and continuing dialogue with research assistants to develop proposals to present to the University as part of the Research Operations Project agreement that is part of our current contract.  This agreement allows for joint Union-management projects “to build opportunities for professional development and advancement for research staff, and to address the unique pressures of the research enterprise and its funding environment,” among other things.  We will also work to continue the conversation that the interviews opened up with the non-union research workers who work alongside Local 34 members.

“We really hope this decision is changed,” said Tyisha Walker. “Closing Commons will affect so many people, both workers and students.”

Many Local 34 members in the Residential Colleges and Dining Services have signed a solidarity petition stating:

“As Local 34 C&Ts, we stand in solidarity with Local 35 Dining Hall staff. We the undersigned believe Commons is a unique place and is central to the Yale undergraduate experience. Therefore, we oppose the planned changed to the dinner service at Commons. We believe closing Commons during dinner with have negative consequences on all dining halls and on student life. This change will create over-crowding in residential dining and limit the undergraduates’ ability to eat in the dining hall of their choice.”