Yale Alumni United

What would happen if GESO were to form a graduate student union?

Graduate students would be forced to work under the control of work rules set by the AFL-CIO in a contentious collective bargaining process with the university. Flexibility and freedom would be destroyed at the expense of union power.

GESO, an organization that is not above intentionally smearing Yale's reputation (see #5) to gain bargaining leverage, would gain more power.

Graduate students would lose flexibilty, be forced to join a union and pay dues (presumably some of the dues would pay back the extensive subsidies from the AFL-CIO) to a cause they have decisively rejected. They would be thrust into an employment relationship instead of remaining in the comfortable cooperative system that has worked for hundreds of years. It will replace free choice of where to attend graduate school with the questionable paternalism of the AFL-CIO. Graduate students will become pawns in the AFL-CIO's quest to unionize all Yale employees, put in the uncomfortable position of having to cross picket lines to get to class. Graduate students would be forced to work under union labor rules and all the inefficiency that would introduce.

Undergraduates, who have conclusively voted against unionization, would be harmed by decreased TA flexibility, more strikes, restrictive union work rules, and a shift from a coordial learning environment to an employment relationship.

The community would suffer from an increase in the power of Bob Proto at the expense of Yale, an increase in the liklihood of labor disruptions and a slide in the prestige of Yale.

The bottom line:

Unionization: bad for graduate students, bad for undergraduates, bad for Yale.

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