[PEN-L:2388] URGENT UPDATE FROM YALE GESO: Yale 'Trials & TA Lockout

[D Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>]

> From: nagps@xxxxxxxxxx
> To: nagps-official@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: URGENT UPDATE FROM YALE GESO: Yale 'Trials & TA Lockout'
>
> January 13, 1996
>
> Dear Friends:
>
> Here's the latest on the Yale strike:
>
> This past Wednesday, 138 people were arrested for blocking the street in
> front of the Yale Graduate School in protest over the disciplinary hearings
> going on against three leaders of the union here.  There was a total of
> over 500 people at the demonstration, including workers from the other Yale
> unions and faculty and graduate students from other universities throughout
> the New York/New England region.
>
> The "trials" took much longer than anyone expected.  The first five hours
> were taken up with negotiations over whether or not our lawyer -- a Yale law
> professor -- would be allowed to address the Disciplinary Committee on
> procedural issues, and ended with the Committee ruling that he could not.
> So we had a lawyer present who was not allowed to say a word throughout the
> proceedings.  The Committee would not allow a union steward to participate
> in the hearings, and refused a request to tape record the proceedings.  When
> the person being charged asked to question the Dean of the Graduate School,
> she was required to write out a short list of questions, which the Committee
> read privately to the Dean, and then summarized his answers, with no chance
> for cross-examination.  After a day and a half of hearings, the Committee
> found Diana Paton guilty of "disrupting University business" and "refusal to
> obey an order issued in the line of duty by a faculty member."  She has had a
> letter of reprimand placed in her file, and is barred from teaching for the
> spring semester, i.e. she was fired from her spring semester job.  The second
> case is scheduled to be heard on Monday, and the third either late this coming
> week or the beginning of the following week.
>
> While we're obviously relieved that Ms. Paton was not expelled, to be banned
> from teaching is illegal under federal labor law.  On Thursday we filed federal
> charges against the Yale adminsitration for violating the National Labor
> Relations Act, though since the courts have not yet ruled whether graduate
> teachers are covered under the Act, it may take years before this case is
> settled.
>
> Meanwhile, Yale is going ahead with plans to lock out all strike participants.
> Last week, all teaching assistants got letters at home threatening that if
> they did not turn in grades by the start of the spring semester on Monday,
> January 15, they will be fired.  Yale is on the way to becoming the first
> university to use academic "replacement workers" -- several departments are
> recruiting anti-union faculty and graduate students to take the jobs of fired
> TA's.  Faculty members who are known "liberals" in their scholarly work are
> now cancelling lectures, eliminating discussion sections, or capping under-
> graduate enrollment in order to comply with the administration's lockout
> strategy.  It's not clear whether Yale can really get by with so many TA's
> locked out, how much undergraduate education will be compromised, and how the
> incredible bitterness and tension in the Graduate School will play out.
>
> On Sunday, Jan. 21, the contracts for Yale's other two unions expire.  These
> unions, representing clerical workers, technicians, dining hall, custodial
> and maintenance workers, are facing their own problems, with Yale asking for
> major cuts in wages and benefits.  GESO is officially allied with the other
> Yale unions, and there is a real possibility of a campus-wide strike during
> part of the coming semester.
>
> There have been some TA's who have been intimidated by Yale's tactics and
> have handed in their grades. For the most part, however, the strike participants
> are holding strong, and we're hopeful that the administration will begin talks
> soon.  Last week's lockout deadline for those TA's who teach their own courses
> came and went without a single person handing over their grades.  The pressure
> from outside academics remains critical -- your letters to President Levin
> (richard.levin@xxxxxxxx), Yale faculty (firstname.lastname@xxxxxxxx) and the
> campus paper (ydn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), together with the censure motions at
> the academic conventions, are creating increasing pressure on the administration
> to negotiate.  The administration's style in the past is always to say "no, no,
> never" right up util the last minute, so we take their current intransigence
> with a large grain of salt. Between the strikers on campus and supporters in
> the broader community, we're confident that we can bring Yale to the negotiating
> table.
>
> With some people already locked out of jobs, and anticipating the possibility
> of a broader strike, we have begun a hardship fund to help pay the rent,
> utilities, etc. of people who are without jobs.  If you are interested in
> contributing, checks can be made out to GESO, with a notation of "hardship
> fund", and sent to 425 College St., New Haven, CT, 06511.  In the event of a
> campus-wide strike, the hardship fund will be made available to members of the
> other Yale unions in addition to the TAs.
>
> Again -- thanks incredibly for your support.
>
> Gordon Lafer,
> Research Director, Federation of University Employees at Yale
>
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