Yale Alumni United
There are some surprising facts that you wouldn't know just by listening to GESO propaganda. Here are a few:
1. A majority of graduate students have clearly rejected GESO organization
In 2003 GESO held a suprise "election" (see #2) supervised by the League of Women Voters. GESO Chairwoman Anita Seth promised that "The vote will clearly show the support that GESO has on this campus." The result? Graduate students rejected unionization 691-651.
2. That's right, GESO lost their own rigged vote!
In the 2003 "election" GESO refused to follow universally recognized NLRB voting standards and instead chose to implement their own rules. The NLRB has a standard set of procedures designed for fairness to both parties and a neutral vote-count. Yale even offered to help run a vote using standard NLRB procedures.
Instead, GESO set their own rules and brought in the League of Women Voters to run the election according to GESO rules. They gave less than a week of notice to the community, in the hopes of preventing the opposition from having time to mobilize. Their
When it became clear that GESO was losing they chose not to count 80 ballots that GESO declared inelligible according to their own criteria. Now nobody will ever know how much more decisively graduate students rejected unionization.
3. Undergraduates reject GESO by a 3 - 1 margin
GESO repeatedly claims to have support among undergraduates. However, when polled, the truth becomes much more clear. Yale undergraduates reject GESO by a 3 to 1 margin.
4. Graduate students already recieve almost $200,000 in financial aid and also recieve comprehensive healthcare
Yale provides at least 4 years of fully-paid tuition (a value of at least at least $23,000 per year) to every incoming PhD candidate.
Yale provides an additional $18,000 to $23,000 annual stipend to every incoming PhD candidate.
Yale provides free comprehensive healthcare to all doctoral students and subsidized healthcare for spouses and partners.
In total, Yale provided $71 million in financial aid for graduate students in 2003-4.
5. The law does not consider graduate students to be employees
In the National Labor Relations Board explicitly ruled that graduate students are not employees. This was in response to an attempt by the United Auto Workers to organize teaching assistants at Brown University.
6. Union organizers are seeking to impose their will on the majority
If GESO were to succeed then under Connecticut law every graduate student must become a member, pay dues, and be subjected to the collective bargaining agreement. Individual graduate students would no longer be free to work out their own arrangements with professors and the administration lest they be accused of violating the collective bargaining agreement. Flexibility and freedom would be stifled. Parent union UNITE-HERE would control GESO's activities.
7. GESO parent union UNITE-HERE has a history of corruption, vote-fixing, and slush-fund payoffs
"HERE has long been considered one of the most corrupt unions in America." The Nation magazine called HERE-IU "often corrupt."
HERE-IU boss (and now UNITE-HERE hospitality chief) John Wilhelm was directly involved in a 2001 union scandal involving mis-directing Local 1 funds to fund Wilhelm's prefered slate of candidates. Some have gone as far as calling this scandal "essentially election-fixing."Local 1 resorted to suing Wilhelm to remove him from power.
John Wilhelm was also involved in the ULLICO scandal. Wilhelm was serving on the ULLICO board when it was discovered that board members were openly engaged in insider trading.
John Wilhelm himself recieves salary and benefits in excess of $300,000 per year, while many Local 34 and 35 employees struggle to earn less than one-sixth as much.
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