Yesterday, Yale cancelled negotiations at the last minute, supposedly in order to take their time reviewing the proposal from Locals 34 and 35 Tuesday, which significantly decreased wage demands, scaled back the Local 34 job security language, and dropped proposals on a range of auxillary issues, as well as codifying at the table what was already (especially since they offered binding arbitration) abundantly clear: that 34 (Clerical and Technical Workers) and 35 (Food Service and Maintenance Workers) will settle without GESO (Graduate Student Teaching Assistants and Researchers) or 1199 (Yale – New Haven Hospital Workers). This is after the unions reduced their proposed pension modifier by about seven times Yale’s increase in its pension proposal. This morning, after building up suspense, what did Yale’s negotiators bring to the table? A minor job security improvement that would compensate a select group of workers with a week’s severance pay for every year of work and extend by a few months the time that another subset of the Local remains in the hiring pool after being fired. Yale continues to insist, as it has for months, that it doesn’t want a strike. As the 27th draws forward, those words only become more hollow.
Tag Archives: Yale
Michael Gecan of the IAF has a searing, sobering piece in the latest Village Voice on the Democratic and Republican elites and the Americans left behind:
They are angry, and they are driven. They are profoundly and passionately clear on what and whom they are against. They intend to vanquish the upstart elite, the progressive establishment. It’s not Osama, Dead or Alive. It’s Dean, Dead or Alive. It’s Clinton, Dead or Alive. They have only one major problem: They don’t know what in the world—in the bigger, broader world where most moderate Americans live and work, play and pray, and try to raise their kids—they are for. Their relationship with their base is better than the Democrats’, but still terribly thin. It is not rooted in the interests of families struggling to survive in a service economy, with few or no benefits, in schools that continue to stumble and decline. It is not based on a foundation of respect for the working American, the struggling American, the vast majority of Americans who lack wealth. Not at all. Like the upstart elite, the new Republicans could care less about these matters. No, their newfound commitment to building a base is an instrument and offshoot of their tribal war with the progressive left. It is as clinical and cynical as the attitudes of some of the anti-war student leaders of the ’60s.
The Democrats lack this depth of passion and focused clarity. They aren’t as heated or as hardworking as the Republicans. They still sip sparkling water and make smug little jokes about Bush’s malaprops. They keep telling themselves how much smarter and slicker they are than the boobs on the right and the bohunks in the middle. They still think that getting straight A’s and appearing on television and having famous friends will dazzle the hoi polloi.
Both parties are led by women and men who believe it’s their God-given right to make more messes—from the Yale Commons, to blighted cities, to White House sleeping arrangements, to failed health reform, to bankrupt companies, to gutted industries, to post-war Iraq. They count on a wide and appreciative following in the media to report their antics and a silent servant class to clean up the wreckage.
Zach reports on the demonstration today by Locals 34 and 35 in response to Yale’s “signing bonus” sham:
Today at noon, hundreds ( Jay Driskell and i estimated somewhere between 300 and 500) of workers in Local 35 and Local 34 gathered in front of woodbridge hall to present president levin with invoices for the retro pay Yale’s stealing from them. The invoices are stamped “past due” and read “Please immediately remit payment of my retroactive salary increase in the amount of $[insert amount here]. This amount represents payment due to me for my loyal, dedicated service to yale… Your offer of $1500 is unnacceptable and insufficient to cover the services rendered. Failure to remit full payment as due will result in further serious action. Levin didn’t have enough respect for the workers – or evidently didn’t feel that the crisis was serious enough – to warrant coming out and talking to people. Instead, he made Nina Glickson stand outside the front steps and collect the invoices of several hundred workers…In the next few hours hundreds more invoices will be faxed in. Negotiations resume at 3pm.
The Yale Daily News (hereafter YDN) is back in business with a, in all fairness, relatively balanced piece on negotiations and the upcoming strike. As is often the case, the biggest fault is in the information that’s missing – this time, first, that while negotiations didn’t restart until August 12, the unions have been calling for intensive negotiations to begin for months; second, that while Yale tripled it’s “signing bonus,” that bonus still represents between 0 and 40%, depending on the worker, of the retroactive pay that Yale removed from the table. Fortunately, the men and women who work at Yale know better than to go by what they read in the YDN. The rest of us in the Yale community should all as well.
Back from an amazing couple days hearing from and meeting with the Reverend Jim Lawson – and others involved in Yale’s intensifying labor fight – in New Haven. As Lawson preached, “President Levin, it’s time to grow up and become a human being.” Meanwhile, Yale is touting it’s new contract offer, two major highlights of which are offers to partially undo decisions to worsen their proposals since the beginning of negotiations – in other words, when Helaine Klasky says that Yale has “improved our already generous offer in the hopes that this will be the foundation for a settlement,” she must mean that Yale’s new “generous offer” is an improvement on its “already generous offer” insofar as it is more like Yale’s original “generous offer” than Yale’s recent “already generous offer.” Confusing? By design more than by accident I think. The unions have been calling from the beginning for a 4-year contract, and Yale was calling for a 6-year contract until March, when Levin, after the week-long strike, decided that the best compromise between 4 year and 6 years would be 10 years (must be Yale math…). Yale’s new-and-improved offer as of this week? An 8 year contract. In a similar vein, Yale came into negotiations nearly two years ago with a commitment to retroactive pay – annual raises for the period during which the contract was expired and was being renegotiated – after signing. After a year, Yale revoked its agreement to retroactive pay. When confronted about that decision by students, President Levin responded in top form that he doesn’t “believe in rewarding bad behavior.” Yale’s new and improved offer? A “signing bonus” that would represent the equivalent of at most 40% of retroactivity for some workers, and much less for others. The last major pieces of Yale’s new offer – and the only ones that represents an improvement over Yale’s paltry offer of nearly two years back – were a slight increase in its second year wage proposal and an increase in its pension offer, which the unions matched in their counter-proposal by reducing their proposed pension multiplier from 2.1 to 1.95%, a decrease in their pension offer seven times the increase in Yale’s. These three components, together, represent the additional $9 million which Yale announced in June it had budgeted for the contracts and was going to be offering – at that time, Yale’s negotiators also said that as far as they were concerned, that was the sum for the contracts and they weren’t prepared to negotiate beyond there. FHUE has a more extensive brekdown here. It’s good to see Yale making movement at the table. But if the administration wants to avert a strike ten days from now, they have much more work ahead of them – and not in the form of glossy ads or Orwellian pickets.
Thanks to YaleInsider for the intrepid blogging, and for the new link to this “Little Wild Fair and Balanced Bouquet” on the revamped site.
Negotiators from Yale and from HERE Locals 34 and 35 came back to the table again yesterday, over a week after the unions had been hoping Yale would be willing to restart negotiations. As the unions report, Yale showed little change of heart:
Negotiations with Yale resumed Tuesday afternoon at the Omni Hotel. Despite headlines about Yale’s “new faces” at the bargaining table (after the recent departure of several key administrators), there were no new faces to be seen on Yale’s team. Neither were there any major new proposals from Yale. This was not unexpected for our first session back at the bargaining table but, on behalf of our negotiating committees, Local 35 President Bob Proto made our intentions clear: we are ready to meet all day, every day of the week and all night, if necessary to achieve a fair contract. To make that work, however, Yale must be prepared to engage in the real give-and-take of actual negotiation and compromise on wages, pensions, job security and training and advancement.
While Yale had no serious new proposals for us yesterday, Chief Negotiator Brian Tunney reiterated his assertion that Yale is “prepared to move on pensions, wages and retroactivity.” While that may sound promising, we have heard those words too often before without any actual results. As Local 34 President Laura Smith responded, “It’s time to stop preparing to move and start actually moving.”
…Despite the reference to retroactivity, Tunney was quick to say that what he meant by retroactivity was actually a discussion of a “signing bonus”–a far cry from the full retroactivity that Yale should agree to after we accepted their first-year wage proposal. Tunney also confirmed that when the newly-renovated Sprague Hall reopens next week, the building will be cleaned and serviced by low-wage subcontracted workers, not by Local 35…Yale’s one “new proposal” was a suggestion that Local 34 workers who are laid off due to subcontracting to a Yale affiliate (like YNHH) be given an “extra” three months in the Interim Employment Pool–hardly reassuring in light of the enormous potential, particularly in the Medical Area, for shifting University to Hospital work…
As the AP reports:
Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said it is impossible to know whether a deal would be reached. “We’re always hopeful, but certainly we’re far apart and they have some unrealistic proposals,” Conroy said.
Union spokeswoman Deborah Chernoff said the unions are waiting for Yale to come forward with new proposals for wages and pensions. “We’re prepared to meet every day. We’re prepared to meet all day, and we’re prepared to meet on the weekends, but we have to have something to talk about,” she said.
Meanwhile, as the Register reports, Mayor DeStefano is also keen to the irony of Bruce Alexander serving, in the wake of Bob Culver’s departure, as Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs and for Finance and Administration at once:
DeStefano said Alexander “potentially is going to be serving the community agenda at the same time they are presiding over the biggest walkout and longest walkout of Yale workers in over a decade.” He feels this presents an “inherent conflict. Why run the risk of confusing the agendas?”
Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky responded that the assignment is a temporary one for Alexander who was named to the post because “Bruce is the officer with business and financial expertise.”
As YaleInsider observes, “If there were ever any doubt about the ultimate reason for Yale’s VP position for community relations, created in the wake of the 1996 strike, let that doubt be dispelled.”
Norman Solomon of FAIR suggests the type of corrections we should be seeing in the news:
For the 958th consecutive week, the Daily Bugle published a Business section each day without ever including a Labor section in the paper. This tacit identification with the interests of capital over the interests of working people is inconsistent with the values of independent journalism. The editors regret this chronic error…
The Daily Bugle published a wire-service story yesterday that flatly reported: “The events of 9/11 changed everything in America.” But Sept. 11 did not really change everything. For instance, widespread hunger among low-income people has persisted in this country. To take another example, 9/11 did not change the society’s basic financial structures, which continue to widen already-huge economic gaps between rich and poor. It is inaccurate and irresponsible journalism to report that “9/11 changed everything.” The Daily Bugle regrets that it has gotten caught up in this media myth…
A news report in the Daily Bugle on Thursday stated that Secretary of State Colin Powell is “a moderate.” This assessment should have been attributed rather than being presented as an objective fact. The lengthy article did not mention Powell’s record of strong efforts for the contra war in Nicaragua, the invasion of Panama, two massive assaults on Iraq and other wars waged by the Pentagon: a record some would contend hardly merits characterization as “moderate.”
…News articles and editorials about regulatory issues related to the media industry have not included the relevant information that the Silverado Newspaper Group, the chain that owns the Daily Bugle, stands to gain or lose millions of dollars in profits depending on the outcome of deregulation proposals. The editor regrets the lack of appropriate disclosure and disclaimers…
The funny thing about media bias is that the bias which identifies itself as such garners the most attention and also presents the least danger. This past year, for example – to switch for a moment to the question of bias in the classroom – my political science professor first semester made a derisive remark at one point about Florida having “cost us the election,” blushed, and apologized. My political science professor second semester devoted a significant part of the course to explaining why criticism of Congress as an institution is borne of lack of understanding of Congress, impatience, and lack of commitment to democracy. The pro-Gore partisan bias is much more likely to be flagged, or potentially to be marshalled as a further anecdote of the liberal bias of the academy. But the pro-Congress ideological bias, precisely because it’s subtle and it doesn’t present itself as one of two or more alternatives, is much more persuasive and problematic. Part of the important work FAIR does is exposing and challenging the unspoken assumptions and fixed paradigms through which the supposedly liberal media filter their narrative.
When I first talked to Bob in 2001 about his leaving the corporate sector to come to Yale, he expressed the concern that if his family preferred to remain in Boston, the weekly commute might take its toll, and, unfortunately, this has proven to be the case. In Bob’s two years here, we have benefited from his attention to improving our business practices and his warm and genuine embrace of the institution and its values.
President Levin’s previously-discussed letter announcing the abrupt end of Bob Culver’s time as Yale Vice President for Administration and Finance is here. It’s an open question whether the reference to “embrace of the institution and its values” includes telling workers that money for training them for more advanced jobs was “money down the drain.” What “improving our business practices” has wrought will – barring an administative change of heart – be dramatically proven yet again on August 27
YaleInsider takes a critical look at the New Haven Advocate’s annual round-up of salaries for non-profit employees in the area. Among several interesting statistics – like Yale’s Chief Investment Officer making two and half times as much as its Provost, and President Levin making over one and half times as much as President Bush (that’s over twenty times as much as the average union worker at Yale) – is a gem from Yale – New Haven Hospital Spokesperson Katie Krauss, trying to explain why the Hospital’s CEO, Joe Zaccagnino (who Yale U. named Alum of the Year last month after he and his hospital were caught defrauding the poor and sick to save money), had taken a $70,000 pay cut:
Hospital spokeswoman Katie Krauss says executive pay fluctuates because it’s based on a complex formula of “variable” components … “This is a big place. It’s not a community hospital,” she says. Zaccagnino heads not just Yale-New Haven Hospital, but a network that includes Bridgeport and Greenwich hospitals–a group with a combined budget of more than $1.1 billion and 10,000 employees.
As YaleInsider says:
OK, good to know they don’t consider Yale-New Haven Hospital to be “a community hospital”. Perhaps this means they’ll simplify and shorten their name to “Yale Hospital”?
Given that Levin sits on and appoints a third of the Hospital’s Board, that a quarter of Yale’s income is funnelled through the Hospital and that Local 34 and GESO employees work side by side with (as yet ununionized) Hospital Employees doing the same work, might not be a bad idea.
A brief round of updates:
Verizon negotiations continued last night, with the company reporting major progress taking place towards a settlement, the unions reporting little substantive movement, and both sides committing themselves to continued talks. Work is continuing as usual in the interim.
Arianna Huffington has a press conference scheduled for today, and has confirmed to members of the press wide speculation that she plans to announce her candidacy for the Governorship. Meanwhile Arnold will announce tonight whether he’ll run, and the national AFL-CIO has come out in support of Davis and against Democrats running to replace him. You can see who’s filed a statement of intention to run for Governor here.
Finally, Bob Culver’s termination as Yale Vice President of Finance and Administration was apparently announced to Yale managers in a letter from President Levin chalking it up to the a sudden exasperation with the “long commute.” No official announcement has yet been made to the press or to anyone else in the Yale community, including the workers whose negotiations Culver was supposedly orchestrating.
In this week’s New Haven Advocate, Paul Bass brings home the irony of Yale’s ONHSA- (Office of New Haven and State Affairs)sponsored picket of the Board of Aldermen against Naclerio’s (triumphant) resolution calling on Yale to pay its share in taxes to the city:
Yale’s managers were fired up. They couldn’t take no more. They sent a message to their compadres at the Chamber of Commerce calling for help. Dozens took to the streets. They brought signs. They massed in front of New Haven’s City Hall last week. And they marched.
What brought them out to protest?
New Haven’s high poverty?
The state of the schools?
A broken criminal justice system?
Nope. The managers and their comrades picketed on the evening of July 7 to protest New Haven government for being unfair to … Yale.
Another highlight of the article:
Last week’s events signaled “a cultural shift” at that office, observes Julio Gonzalez, executive assistant to Mayor John DeStefano and a Yale alum. “This has nothing to do with their mission. This is definitely different from what they’ve done in the past. Now it’s a lobbying arm.”
Bruce Alexander, a Yale vice president who heads the Office of New Haven & State Affairs, responds that the demonstration fits into the office’s mission: “to inform the community, out of a sense of respect for their opinion, of the facts, and not let those who seek to discredit us for their own narrow agenda define us in the community.”
Anyone who wants to check out Yale’s spin on the facts first-hand, visit Yale’s Office of Public Affairs here. Among their latest work: an ad “congratulating a list of employees who’d reached 25, 30, 35, 40, or 45 years of service at Yale and trumpeting Yale’s record as an employer. 47 of the employees honored on the list wrote back to the papers that had printed it:
We are proud to have been honored recently for our many years of service working at Yale University, but we were surprised to see our names in the Yale advertisement published by the Register claiming that Yale provides “strong job security, good wages, and excellent benefits.” We do not believe this to be true.
Throughout our years of working at Yale, we have fought and struggled with Yale’s administration to force them to provide what little they do give us. Nevertheless, our wages are still too low, we still face retirement into poverty, and Yale is still threatening the future security of our jobs.
A constant stream of misleading ads isn’t going to change this. It’s only going to change when Yale decides to treat us, and all its employees, with respect.
The most telling part of Bruce Alexander’s quote, however, would have to be the accusation that the unions have a “narrow agenda” – meaning perhaps that they value their workers’ wages over, say, Bruce Alexander’s. See less than a year ago, President Richard Levin wrote me and the rest of a student body a letter about his fear that the unions had “a broader agenda” – meaning that those thugs not only wanted good wages and benefits, but also wanted their neighbors in Fair Haven to be able to get jobs at Yale, their children to be able to attend adequately-funded schools, and their fellow workers to be able to organize. Maybe the polite thing would be for Yale’s leadership just to dictate to Union leadership at the negotiating table the precise acceptable breadth of their agenda, so as to avoid this Goldilock’s problem we seem to be having. But first they would have to come to the negotiating table…
Researchers with Yale’s unions have just completed a new report on systematic insider trading at the University. It’ll be interesting to see what Public Affairs comes up with as this story develops…I’m betting on “The Unions need to focus more on the bargaining table,” and “Yale is a non-profit institution, so how can we be accused of trying to make money?” Here’s how Conroy handled the San Jose Mercury News:
Thomas Conroy, Yale’s deputy director of public affairs, confirmed Baker’s involvement. However, he said Baker’s role was disclosed to the other members of the investment committee at the time and dismissed the report as contract-time politics. “This is how they negotiate,” he said.
Conroy, Levin, Culver and others might be better positioned to know how the unions negotiate had they shown up at the negotiating table…
From the report:
The IRS Form 990, a public document that must be filed by Yale University, asks:
Schedule A, Part III
2. During the year, has the organization, either directly or indirectly, engaged in any of the following acts with any of its trustees, directors, officers, creators, key employees, or members of their families, or with any taxable organization with which any such person is affiliated as an officer, director, trustee, majority owner, or principal beneficiary?
(a) Sale, exchange, or leasing of property?
(c) Furnishing of goods, services, or facilities?
(e) Transfer of any part of its income or assets?
If the answer to any question is “Yes”, attach a detailed statement explaining the transactions
Yale has opted not to answer the question, marking neither “yes” nor “no” on its IRS Form 990 filed for every fiscal year from 1990 to 2000 (the most recent submitted). Instead, Yale has attached the following statement in lieu of answering the questions:
Other than the payment of reasonable and not excessive compensation and/or reimbursement of expenses for principal officers and trustees, this institution knows of no significant transaction between it and any such person or any corporation with which any such person is affiliated other than transactions in the normal conduct of its activities. All such transactions are conducted at arm’s length and for good and sufficient consideration. (Yale University, IRS 990, Year 2000 Schedule A, Part III, Line 2, Statement 16)
Yale’s statement fails to offer reassurance that individual transactions are legal and have not provided trustees with excess benefit. As one tax law training manual explains about this section of the Form 990:
While the lines covering the particular transaction in question in such cases would be answered “yes,” their “innocent” nature would be explained in the attachment that, as noted, is to be made for any question answered “yes.” … Indeed, if the filer answers any of the lines 2a through 2e “yes” and does not attach a statement explaining the transaction, a reader might suppose that the filer was not disclosing aspects of the transaction that it believed would embarrass it.[6]
Putting aside all other considerations, full disclosure is always the best and strongest defense against the charge of inappropriate self-dealing.
Yale’s refusal to disclose the interested transactions outlined in this report presents cause for concern.
This is a victory for New Haven and Yale both. A letter I wrote to the New Haven Register too late to be printed:
A few months ago, Yale Associate Vice President Mike Morand decried Alderman Matt Naclerio’s resolution, on which the Board will vote tonight, as an “attack” on the “longstanding and deep-rooted American tradition for churches, colleges, schools, and others.” Given that the resolution would challenge the “super-exemption” which allows Yale to buy New Haven property even for for-profit ventures and remove it from the city’s tax base, and would call on Yale to increase its annual voluntary contribution to the city in lieu of taxes, which is currently less money than Yale pays annually to the city of New York, Morand’s comment forces me, as a New Haven resident and a Yale student, which august tradition Morand sees threatened, and what vision he and others among Yale’s leaders have for partnership between Yale and New Haven. Alderwoman Lindy Lee Gold’s description at a May public hearing of New Haveners who want to see the nation’s second-wealthiest University make a fuller contribution to one of the nation’s poorest cities as behaving like an “ungrateful petulant child” articulates one vision of Yale-New Haven relations. Yale’s public rhetoric, as when President Levin expressed his hopes last January that “by adopting active strategies for civic improvement, by becoming engaged institutional citizens, we can make a major difference in the quality of urban life,” suggests a far more progressive vision. But in struggling for years to divide a broad-based movement throughout this city for a new social contract between New Haven and its dominant employer, in conducting a Soviet-style election in order to keep a New Haven preacher and Yale Alum off of the Yale Corporation, in leading the campus and community once more towards a bitter, protracted, and unnecessary strike, and now in fighting to defend an arrangement in which New Haven loses $13 million dollars a year in differential between PILOT and Yale’s property value even as the city considers a third tax increase, my University sends a message more in line with Alderman Gold’s rhetoric than our President’s. Tonight’s resolution is not a threat to the best traditions of this city or this University but rather a step away from the ugly side of their three centuries of shared history. For this reason I am proud that my Alderman stands in support of this resolution and proud to call, with my peers, for the Board tonight to pass overwhelmingly a resolution that would push my University to act in a manner which reflects the ideals that its espouses and pursues a vision for true partnership and progressive change.
Josh Eidelson 