Looks like Aldermen Mae Ola Riddick, Hazellann Woodall, and Lindy Lee Gold, all of whom received significant support from Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs in exchange for consistent opposition to the movement to bring together the New Haven community to demand real partnership with Yale, have all lost in primaries today. This is good news for New Haven, and in the long term for Yale as well. This is bad news for Alexander, Morand, and Levin.
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
From the Harvard Crimson:
At the core of the workers’ grievance are demands for higher wages and pension benefits, the same issues that led workers to strike for five days in March. The picket lines—manned by workers ranging from secretaries to custodians to dietary workers—began on the day Yale’s dormitories opened to upperclass students. Jackson rallied workers and met with Yale President Richard C. Levin the following afternoon. “It was a very productive meeting,” Jackson said, adding that Levin “felt the workers at the bottom deserved a better deal than they had.” But the meeting did not lead to an agreement…
Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesperson, said the proportion of unionized workers who showed up for work indicates that the university’s offer “is a good offer.” According to Conroy, 59 percent of Local 34 workers showed up for work, although he added that a larger percentage of Local 35 members had not crossed picket lines.
Josh R. Eidelson, a Yale sophomore who is a spokesperson for the Undergraduate Organizing Committee, said the university has underestimated the number of workers out on strike. “Essentially, they made 500 workers disappear,” Eidelson said of Yale’s tally…
Dorie Baker, from Yale’s Office of Public Affairs, said the first day of pickets blocked incoming first-year students’ entrance through Phelps Gate, a major entryway to the university’s Old Campus.
Conroy said he did not expect the pickets to disrupt campus activity significantly. “We’ve done a lot of contingency planning for the strike,” he said. “We’re going to meet students’ needs inside and outside the classroom.” Conroy also said he did not think many students would be deterred from crossing picket lines to enter buildings, and that the pickets were not much of a deviation from Yale’s normal atmosphere. “It’s always kind of chaotic,” he said.
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. has stepped into the role of mediator in the ongoing negotiations…
Local 34 workers stayed out on strike for 10-and-a-half weeks in 1984, and Local 35 remained on strike for 13 weeks in 1977. Those two strikes were the longest in the unions’ histories.
From the Times:
Inside the large auditorium where long red velvet curtains hang from cathedral-style windows and oil paintings of prosperous and powerful men line the walls, hundreds of Yale University students packed in to hear the introduction to a course about the transformation of the modern city, using New Haven as the model.
But as Prof. Douglas W. Rae began his lecture on Thursday, he was soon drowned out by sounds of the transforming city outside: blaring horns, pounding drums and the angry voices of striking Yale workers singing the old Twisted Sister song “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
“Let’s stop and talk about this,” Professor Rae said, interrupting his lecture and moving from behind the lectern on the stage. “They are getting to me,” he said. “This is not easy.”
That, perhaps, was precisely the point. On most prestigious college campuses, it is easy for students, most of them comfortable and confident, to ignore the people who sweep out their dorms, tend their manicured quads and dole out burgers at the campus food court. But this week at Yale, with 2,000 technical, clerical, service and maintenance workers on strike as students returned to school, the fault lines of class and status separating what some here see as the blue bloods versus the blue collars were revealed in a particularly stark and glaring way.
Take the protest Thursday night outside the house of Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin. As men in smart navy suits, well-heeled donors and other supporters of the university made their way into the house for a reception, hundreds of protesters clogged the sidewalk. Some wore sandals, others sneakers or working boots. They stamped their feet, rattled soda cans filled with coins and shouted from megaphones. From inside the three-story red brick house, the guests peeked out from behind white shutters only to be met with cries that Mr. Levin face them.
For the majority of the workers, the main issue is one of respect…
“If you’re the premier university in the country, bring us up to that caliber,” said Lyle Widdows, who works in the dining services. “I am proud to say I work for Yale; I just wish Yale would feel the same.”
Gerry Chabbuck, 46, a worker in the animal research department, said part of the problem was simply the way negotiators for Yale talked to the workers. “Their attitude is that we should be grateful to work for wonderful Yale,” he said. “Do it and like it.”
From the Detroit Free Press:
Two top Environmental Protection Agency officials who were deeply involved in last week’s controversial easing of an air pollution rule for old power plants just took private-sector jobs from firms that benefit from the changes.
Days after the changes in the power-plant pollution rule were announced, John Pemberton, chief of staff in EPA’s air and radiation office, told colleagues he would join Southern Co.
That Atlanta-based utility is the nation’s No. 2 power-plant polluter and was a driving force in lobbying for the rule changes. Southern, which gave more than $3.4 million in political contributions in the last four years while it sought the rule changes, hired Pemberton as “director of federal affairs.”
Similarly, Tuesday, Ed Krenik, who had been EPA’s associate administrator for congressional affairs, started work at Bracewell & Patterson, a top Washington law firm that had coordinated lobbying for several utilities on easing the coal-fired power-plant pollution rule. The law firm also served as home base for and shares staff with the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which was created by several utilities, including Southern Co., to be the public voice favoring the rule changes that EPA just enacted.
EPA chief spokeswoman Lisa Harrison downplayed the hirings, saying neither Pemberton nor Krenik played a major role in the rule changes, which allow more than 500 older power plants to upgrade without adding pollution-control devices that would have been required without the rule change. She said Pemberton “played a minimal role on (the rule change) in the past two-and-a-half years.”
You would have thought they’d at least have taken a little time off first in the interim…
Let them eat Zionism:
A feud between Israel’s prime minister and Diaspora Jewish charities over the use of Israeli hunger as a fundraising tool blew up in the prime minister’s face last week, following publication of an
American-backed study showing that hunger not only exists but is widespread in Israel.
The study, which was leaked to the Israeli press and dominated headlines for two days last week, showed that 22% of Israeli households, more than one in five, suffer from inadequate nutrition because of poverty. . . Declaring that Israel had “poverty, but no hunger,” Sharon won Cabinet approval June 1 for a resolution calling on Diaspora charities to focus on “Jewish and Zionist education” rather than on Israelis’ economic hardship.
Anybody remember Labor Zionism?
Eric Alterman is right to ask:
Is Karl Rove advising Joe Lieberman? The latter has been shilling for the disastrous Bush war all along. Last night he announced, “The Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression.” Expect to hear Republicans quote that ad nauseum should Dean become the nominee. This too from a Lieberman press release: “HOWARD DEAN’S PROTECTIONIST TRADE POLICY WOULD DEVASTATE AMERICA’S ECONOMY.” Lieberman was originally elected with the help of Republican conservatives led by William F. Buckley Jr. to defeat Lowell Weicker, one of America’s most distinguished and independent-minded senators. The leopard, spots, etc.
Bob Kerrey writes an panegyric to the median voter theorem disguised as a call to political courage:
So, show me the person, like Mr. Lieberman, who has angered a partisan Democratic audience with an unpopular idea and you have someone with what it takes to be our next president. And the next time you jump to your feet with applause for a candidate who says what you want to hear, remember that you may be leading them — rather than the other way around.
God forbid the agenda of a Democratic Presidential candidate should be influenced by Black people, poor people, the labor movement, and those other “special interests.”
Good thing after Kerrey lost the primary in 1992 we were saved from having the standard bearer of the Democratic party be someone who dismantles the values and institutions of the New Deal in the name of political maturity and sees leadership in turning away from the constituencies which represent the base of the party and its moral compass – oh, wait…
My new YDN piece is on-line here. I like it (even without a few hundred cut words). You might too.
To believe that it is Wilhelm, and not the workers who voted overwhelmingly one year ago to authorize a strike, that chose this job action, that it is Wilhelm, and not the workers, who voted overwhelmingly to reject Yale’s offer again last spring, who decides what’s worth fighting for, and that it is Wilhelm’s promotion, and not their own futures for which workers are marching, is to suggest that the workers of Yale lack the savvy to know what’s best for them. This is the attitude that Yale’s leaders have brought consistently to the bargaining table, and that has brought our university to its ninth strike in 35 years.
Photos from the Yale strike are compiled here.
The Times’ latest analysis is here.
In what some call a clash between blue collars and blue bloods, many of Yale’s workers grew up in New Haven resenting Yale, feeling that it symbolized wealth and arrogance. For its part, Yale has a reputation of being inflexible in negotiations, angering many workers.
Yale officials appear convinced that the university is New Haven’s most generous employer and that its workers should be happy with their lot.
Many Yale workers, seeing few other job opportunities in New Haven, believe that the best way to improve their lot is to remain at Yale and fight to improve wages and benefits. “You combine a union that is not uncomfortable with a very public approach to negotiations and using whatever types of leverage it can find, and a university that’s taken a hard negotiating approach and stuck with it for a long period of time, and it’s a volatile mix,” said Richard Hurd, a labor relations professor at Cornell.
He said Yale traditionally had a hard-line bargaining approach that resembled General Electric’s: make an offer and refuse to budge.
Some Yale administrators and students attribute the university’s labor record to one man: John Wilhelm, a 1967 Yale graduate who is president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, the parent of the two union locals on strike. Mr. Wilhelm, widely viewed as one of labor’s leading strategists, came to prominence within labor by leading the drive to unionize Yale’s clerical workers.
“For 35 years John Wilhelm has organized strikes at Yale,” said Helaine Klasky, Yale’s communications director. “This year is no different. He obviously believes that confrontation rather than cooperation is the best way to settle contract disputes.”
I’d be curious if there’s anyone out there who finds the latter explanation more convincing than the former. My take will be in the YDN tomorrow.
Today was the third meeting between Union and University leadership facilitated by Mayor DeStefano.
Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of our members on strike, we are now meeting with Yale decision makers,” said Local 34 President Laura Smith. “Pensions are a key issue for all of us on strike. It’s time to settle a package that gives us retirement with dignity,” said local 35 President Bob Proto.
It’s about time.
Oh – Akiba Hebrew Academy will open one day late on Monday after a last minute settlement between the union and administrators. Maybe my new place of study could learn something from my old one…
Nathan Newman has a nice round-up of Labor Day news nationally.
In local interest, the teachers at my high school, Akiba Hebrew Academy, had a strike vote tonight – I’ll keep you posted.
CNN has coverage of the March on Yale this morning, as well as other real Labor Day events, here.
“This is the site of national Labor Day outrage,” Jackson said. “This is going to be for economic justice what Selma was for the right to vote.”
The march began shortly after 9 a.m. and ended in a rally at Yale’s Beinecke Plaza and Woodbridge Hall, which houses university President Richard Levin’s office. Police said between 1,000 to 1,500 people marched with Jackson, including Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who graduated from Yale, and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a Yale Law School graduate.
Jackson and about 30 others then blocked traffic. To the cheers of protesters, Jackson was the first to be handcuffed at about 11:30 a.m. and led onto a bus to be processed at police headquarters.
Ever ask yourself just how dishonest – comparatively – GWB (George W. Bush) has been as President? The Washington Monthly has gone where LWB (Little Wild Bouquet) might fear to tread – stacking GWB’s lies against Clinton’s, Reagan’s, and GHWB’s. If there’s any way to make him look more honest, this would be the way to do it. But Washington Monthly’s “Mendacity Index,” which lines up the top six lies for each of the last four heads of state (“Read my lips,” “I did not have sex with that woman,” “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles,” etc.), doesn’t really leave anybody looking too hot. You can also rank ’em yourself here.
Josh Eidelson 