Interesting how the NY Times story is all about how this won't hurt Yale, and how "generous" Yale was, etc. They could have written a very different story, say comparing clerical workers at Yale to other clerical workers, or discussing other union drives going on at other universities, etc. But what I find offensive is that they treat it all like a game. Basically Yale is saying - well, we tried to give them less, but they wouldn't take it, so we gave them more, but it's no sweat off our back... If it is really so easy for them to give living pensions to their workers, why didn't they do so in the first place?

It is interesting to see how quickly Yale rhetoric shifts from selling Yale's financial stress - before settling contracts - to touting how much money Yale has to spend when it wants. The latter, of course, represents reality, and is what workers - and many students - have been saying all along. Everything I've experienced as a student here has suggested that this fight, like most Yale's leadership gets itself into, was for them about power rather than money - it would have been easier and cheaper for Yale to settle a year and a half ago. We were expecting Yale to settle at the point at which holding out and taking the hit to its image and status came to feel more costly in terms of power than settling decent contracts - and that happened more quickly than a lot of people expected.

I find these comments very puzzling, since the final offer was extremely close to the original Yale offer. The union wanted 10% initial yearly raises, Yale wanted 4%, and the final offer is 4%. The 44% figure comes because Yale wanted (and got) an extended contract for many years. The pension offer does represent a significant change in the unions' favor, but even that was just intermediate between the union and Yale positions.

I spent 10 years at Yale (grad student and postdoc). Suffice it to say that I came in as a general supporter of unions and left as a general supporter of unions. I also left with an extremely negative view of the local Yale unions.
And I am very far from being a fan of the administration there.

The maintenance workers did a crappy job of maintaining the physical plant, and the clerical unions provide minimal support tied up with elaborate work rules that have a closer relationship to the factory floor than a university. Locals 34 and 35 are not union heros; they represent a living, breathing example of the stereotypes of the negative features of unions beloved by reactionaries.

Marc

Marc's comments are not rationally based on the findings of organisational research. My own research findings support the bulk of the literature - people work well when they feel they are valued by their employer. they don't work well when they don't feel values by their employer. they DO NOT work well IN ORDER to become valued by their employer.

In other words not paying them more because they are doing a crappy job is a lose-lose strategy. In such situations the only party that can break the cycle is the employer. What is worse in the Yale situation described is that by making such a fight of it the employer has eneded up paying more but without the win of having the morale of their work force thereby enhanced.