To win student support in 1984, the unions knew they had to frame their labor conflict as a social conflict. They claimed Yale's female workers earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same job.
The economics professor who produced that statistic quickly retracted it. In a seminar I took last year my professor used that analysis as an example of what not to do. But "59 cents" picket signs covered the campus anyway, and the unions convinced Yalies that fighting for the predominantly-female Local 34 was the same as fighting for women's rights.
Now, there's a new pitch. While Yale faces an $8 million annual deficit, Local 35 is striking for raises and the creation of 364 new union positions that would cost Yale $49 million annually.
They can't justify this to students, and they don't try. Instead, they use their new pitch, arguing Yale's contract proposals will destroy New Haven. They're wrong.
Local 35 says Yale wants to deny them a "living wage," as if the University wants to starve them. What's a "living wage?" Should a dishwasher without children earn less than a dishwasher with children? Should dishwashers with 10 kids earn more than the chef? "To each according to his needs" is an unrealistic contract proposal.
In 1984, Local 34's posters read, "Pay Us What We're Worth." Now, that's Yale's proposal for Local 35. The unions attack "market wages" as an irrelevant academic concept, saying they don't exist in New Haven because Yale "sets" the wages. If Yale lowers wages, so will all other New Haven employers.
This is evidently wrong. For 12 years, Yale's wages have exceeded what other area employers offered. Instead of "setting" the market wage, Yale flies in its face.
Remember the "Could you live on $10,000 a year?" posters? They assume a part-time worker in the lowest proposed pay grade who doesn't work over the summer. A better question is, "Could you live by working 20 hours a week, nine months a year?"
The "$10,000" posters tried to dramatize two of Yale's proposals. Yale wants to offer new workers less pay and end a wasteful program that gives all Local 35 members work over the summer regardless of need. The unions have trouble arguing against these proposals now, because Yale offered to drop both in exchange for broader authority to subcontract. No deal.
Subcontracting has been the issue all along. It's why you had to walk through a gauntlet to eat a hamburger in Dakota J's last fall. Even the weak Flex Dollar plan, where students traded $600 of dining hall food for $100 of restaurant food, threatened Local 35.
The unions say Yale will "bust" them with subcontracted labor, but that's paranoid. Yale has offered to keep all current employees at their current wages. Since Yale signed the 1992 contract, it has voluntarily increased employment in both unions and decreased its use of subcontracted workers.
Yale wants subcontracting to expand student services. The Flex Dollar debacle started when the unions blocked Yale's plans to open student eateries. Because dining hall workers' wages are far above the market level, those eateries couldn't break even-unless Local 35 let Yale hire new workers at lower pay levels.
The unions even complain that Yale exploits its homeless subcontracted workers by hiring them through an agency that keeps part of their wages. Temporary Labor, Yale's temp agency, is New Haven's oldest and most respected agency. Fewer than 10 percent of their workers are homeless. Yale pays $8.25 an hour for casual workers. The agency keeps only $3.25 of that for taxes and costs, and the workers get the remaining $5. The small non-profit agency that student activists want Yale to use can't work as efficiently or supply enough workers.
From day one, Yale has promised every worker now on the picket lines the same wage they've always made. But Yale can't go on like this forever. Adding $49 million to Yale's $8 million annual deficit won't help New Haven. It will only help the 0.8 percent of New Haven that's in Local 35.
The unions' "Save New Haven" rhetoric easily spins out of control. Pro-union student Francis Engler, ES '97, now feels comfortable saying Yale is "bent on destroying the lives of members of our community." The truth is that Yale has far more to lose in these negotiations than New Haven. Yale isn't an evil corporation; it's a great school trying to bring its student services up to par with its academics. That's more than the unions have offered.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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