Yale Alumni United

GESO claims to be in favor of a number of admirable ends, including "diversity", "families", and "international students." However, GESO is not the right way to achieve these goals. In fact, an active adversarial union may be contrary to many of these goals.

You can be in favor of all of the issues that GESO claims to support without supporting GESO. Even Bob Proto, longtime local union boss, admits that GESO is a ploy by the AFL-CIO to gain leverage with Yale. This is proof that GESO does not have the best interests of Yale Graduate students at heart and that it's real goals are more power for UNITE-HERE, the AFL-CIO, and Bob Proto.

Is a union with close ties to Local 34 and Local 35 really the right way to address faculty diversity concerns? Will going on strike somehow increase the number of qualified professors available to Yale? Or, instead, should graduate students use other channels and work with the administration to make change happen? Graduate students have proven themselves capable of protest and change without requiring a union.

Even if you support unions in the abstract this is not a case where a union is appropriate. When graduate students are deciding what school to attend they have all of the leverage and bargaining power at that point. If students don't like the policies and benefits offered by Yale they are free to go elsewhere. This "voting with their feet" is far more effective and less disruptive than unionizing an educational relationship.

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