Burnt Orange Report

Dude Dobbers,
I am totally all about unions, especially Teamsters, they are great guys. I agree that scabs are scum, they turn their back on their fellow worker and thier potential for better benefits. Much love Dobbers.

This is my first post here- I came looking for Texas events, as I'll be in your state for the next 10 days or so for work.

As a Yale grad, I feel obliged to post in defense of the university. I can't speak to what has happened elsewhere, but I know quite a bit about the Yale situation. I am a big supporter of unions in general, but the grad students at Yale have consistently misused and lied about the situation.

Fundamentally, graduate students are students. They are compensated for their teaching duties, but they are not in the same precarious situation which the administrative staff finds themselves in. I worked in an office during my time at Yale, and when the admin staff went on strike, I fully supported them. I could not support the attempts of a group of graduate students (who had incidentally dissolved the Graduate Senate which had bargained on their behalf) to join their ranks. The situation of an economics grad student at Yale is not the same as that of a 55 year old HS grad making $30,000/year in an office and fighting for benefits. It's just not.

Furthermore, the grad students at Yale have consistently lied about their teaching loads. For example, if a professor teaches a lecture which meets for 3 hours a week, and there are 12 OPTIONAL discussion sections led by TAs/ week, this is described as the TAs teaching 12/15 hours- that is, 80%. This kind of misrepresentation can be convincing, but it doesn't represent reality.

Sorry, but I didn't feel like I could let that go without comment.

I'm not taking a stance on the issue in particular, but I do support the practices of supporting those striking. Fine by me Dobbs.

I have to concur with Chicago Lulu's comments. As an undergraduate at Yale from 98-02, I observed a lot of problems with the arguments and positions taken by GESO. When the service workers, dining hall workers, custodians, and administrative staff struck, I, too, was 100% supportive. However, I simply don't believe that graduate students are in a comparable position. First of all, many grad students who are TAs not only receive stipends, but pay little or no tuition. They also receive healthcare coverage under the student plans, which do have the option of including family members.

Second of all, GESO was fairly unpopular among undergraduates. Some of their demands have the potential to create highly problematic restrictions and rigidities in the way undergraduate classes are taught and structured. Many undergrads were unhappy with the prospect of having aspects of their discussion sections, grading system, finals, papers, etc. dictated by a graduate student union. Though GESO invited undergrads to participate, it wouldn't difficult to conclude that undergraduate members would be a distinct minority, and would have little ability to substantively influence the agenda or the union's contract demands. Moreover, no provisions were made for what would happen to graduating students or students applying to graduate and professional programs themselves if there were a strike or controversy that prevented grades from being recorded or released.

The high rate of "scabs" here may also simply be explained by the fact that GESO has never enjoyed widespread support even among graduate students. Numerous TAs I'd known at school said that they didn't see any problems and that they didn't even pay attention to what the union was doing. I've heard estimates that GESO has never attracted the participation of more than 30 or 40% of the graduate employees. Many students perceived them as a curiosity, rather than a viable movement.

Admittedly, GESO may have addressed some of these problems in the past couple years, but the widespread perception among undergraduates before was that the graduate students did not have the best interests of the College at heart. And in my opinion, Yale is a school where the undergrads have, and should always, come first. That's why I chose to go to the school, and that's why I continue to recommend it to high schoolers today.

I remain open-minded, however, and if someone can convince me that the undergraduates will remain fully protected from any union-related actions, and that they will continue to occupy a central role on campus, I will support the union.

Great post, Dobbs!!

"And a message to any scab TAs at an Ivy League college- you are among the lowest scum in my opinion."

I can think of far worse things. Surely you can too.

The last time I checked this was a free society and people were allowed to make individual choices. I support the efforts of the grad students to form a union, but that doesn't imply that all grad students have to agree. Or is dissent Unamerican?

The implication of your argument is that all strikes and unions are a priori just and legitimate. That's a certain oversimplification made often by the left.

As a former Yale graduate student and teaching assistant, I can tell you that GESO consistently misrepresents the actual working conditions for grad student TA's. Most Yale grad students only TA for a year or so, and, given that the university provides them with full stipends for a minimum of four years (including the $40,000+ per year tuition) while only requiring work for one year, to say that Yale grad students are oppressed for their work is blatantly false. TA-ing for two sections of one class (in which enrollment is limited to 18 students per section) for thirteen weeks is hardly oppressive. GESO does not enjoy the support of a majority of graduate students (indeed, their last vote on unionization intentionally excluded grad students in the sciences in order to ensure they'd have a majority) or of the faculty.

I once figured that the value of my cash stipend alone at Yale was more than $100 an hour - for the privilege of learning how to teach with some of the brightest students in America. And that's part of the essential question here - are grad students employees or students first? I have never seen myself as an employee first. The chance to go to Yale was a chance to learn from brilliant minds, to study in an unbelievable library, and to learn to teach. The fact that the university would pay me for that privilege is something I've never gotten over.

Yale's treatment of its other unions is often appalling, but the notion that Yale treats its grad students poorly is laughable. Compare Yale stipends, benefits (including fantastic health care coverage at Yale's outstanding university hospital), and the prestige and post-grad school employment prospects of a Yale PhD with those of grad students at state universities like UT and you may start to think differently.

What's interesting is that many of the strongest supporters of unionization in the Yale GESO come from privileged backgrounds. Those of us who grew up in public schools (and went to non-Ivy League undergraduate institutions) had a much more profound appreciation for what a great deal we had at Yale.

You should do your research before you jump to support a union simply because it's a union.

Count me in with the rest who are opposed to the would-be graduate student union at Yale. Nothing about GESO has improved in recent years; the lies and aggressive recruiting tactics remain. And even though they have ditched the science students, they still cannot get a majority: out of 1124 grad students in social sciences and humanities, only 400-450 voted for this "strike" (which is more of a paid vacation, really, since they still get their stipends, even though they are shafting their students.)

I am away from Yale doing research now, and my TAing days there are done, I am sorry to say (teaching there was a rare pleasure; I felt fortunate every time I left the classroom) but if I were there now and teaching this semester I would be in the classroom this week for any of my students who wanted me there, because that would be my fucking duty and one I would take responsibly. I have the teaching evaluations to prove my dedication. Students are not widgets you can leave on the assembly line while you go and whine about the oppression of being paid to attend an elite institution. But apparently that makes me scum and a scab. So be it. My students will always be more important to me than the ignorant opinions of blowhard jackasses who haven't bothered to get the facts.

This is not a legitimate strike; just a bunch of grandstanding bourgeois brats playing at victimhood (yale grad 02 is correct: GESO draws from east coast private schools. Everyone I know who attended a public university for undergrad wants NOTHING to do with GESO...).

It must be difficult for the previous commenter to remain so well informed about the tactics, statistics, and constituency of GESO when he/she doesn't even live or work at Yale. I am sorry to say that my own opinion will be delivered with slightly more humility, even though I'm actually a graduate student here (sociology), actually a member of GESO, actually a participant in the strike.
I don't know what proportion of GESO members are from "east coast private schools", as opposed to state schools. Putting aside the question of relevance (except, of course, what has always been used to fight solidarity among working people - namely, class division), my guess is that its pretty high, insofar as most people who go to graduate school - any graduate school - are fairly well off. But why is that, I wonder? Perhaps because well-off people are the only one's who can afford to earn $18,000 a year, particularly for training in jobs with little wage improvement, given the systematic decline of secure (i.e. tenure-track) jobs in higher education. These are both issues that GESO is fighting to improve - a living wage for all graduate students and a reduction in the percentage of teaching done by non-ladder faculty. Undermining efforts at collective negotiation by attributing it to "bourgeois brats" only contributes to us staying that way. As for whether GESO members are more bourgeois than non-GESO members, there's no data I know of to support that claim, the previous comment's compelling anecdotes notwithstanding. However, I can certainly say that I know many fellow members who are from working class backgrounds and/or attended state schools, including my great friend and department organizer Christy Glass, who attended Michigan, and was just featured in an article from her home-town newspaper, the Flint Journal. You can read about her, her background, and her work with GESO:
http://www.mlive.com/business/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/business-2/1114183212133390.xml

On the question of GESO tactics, I know that in the past there's been some problems, but at least in the year since I've been participating, I've seen no evidence of intimidation, lies, or any other suspect behavior. But again, I'm not omniscient. Perhaps the view is better from far away.

The claim that only 450 out of 1124 grad students voted for the strike is misleading. In the last organizing drive, around 60% of non-science students voted to form a union (under the pre-Bush NLRB laws, that would have been more than sufficient for a recognition), and last week at the strike vote, 82% of TAs and 91% of non-TAs voted to strike. So the fact that a majority of students didn't vote to strike doesn't mean that they voted against it, since (at least) 40% of students didn't even vote.

No one in GESO is claiming victimhood; no one is claiming moral equivalence with the struggles and privations of the most oppressed working classes. All we are claiming is that we work, and that our work and our voice deserves recognition. Graduate students are responsible for 30% of undergraduate teaching hours at Yale - an institution at which such teaching is claimed to be the core mission (it is certainly the main reason for their generous tax status and government benefits). That a 13 Billion dollar institution cannot provide a 12-month living wage for its teachers, that they can't provide full health care for its teacher's families (students must pay $2796), or daycare for its children, even though some or all of these benefits are provided at state (and union) schools like U.Mass, U.Michigan, U.Wisconsin; that my friends with children rely on HUSKY (CT's Medicaid) for their kids' health care, or that my friend who is HIV+ relies on state programs to subsidize his prescription drug costs - all these things do not seem right to me. And so even though I am single, and middle-class, and private-school educated, I will fight for GESO, and for a fair and decent contract for myself and for my friends, and for the work that we all do at Yale.