Union backers march at Yale; 100 arrested
NEW HAVEN -- After more than two weeks of blaring bullhorns and picketing classrooms, striking union workers at Yale University heightened their protest yesterday as thousands of union employees from across the Northeast marched through downtown New Haven, culminating in the arrest of at least 100 people, including AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.
Thousands of people flooded the city green in the strongest show of support for Yale's two striking unions since the walkout began more than two weeks ago.
"We're here because this is a struggle for the rights of workers and their families that goes far beyond the confines of this campus," Sweeney told an energized crowd of supporters as he lambasted the Ivy League school as "an institution of higher learning and lower morale."
Yale's eight-year contract offer includes pay raises of 3 to 5 percent, signing bonuses, and pension benefit increases.
But union representatives are calling for higher annual pay increases and pension plans. If an agreement is not reached, union reps want the university to have a third party settle the dispute -- a move Yale has resisted.
At times yesterday, the line of marchers stretched for more than six blocks, filling boulevards and clogging some of the city's narrower streets.
Police estimates of the crowd ranged from 5,000 to more than 10,000.
More than a hundred police officers, many dressed in riot gear, were on hand to control the crowds and take away the marchers, many of whom had planned to be arrested. Several buses filled with union workers from Massachusetts and Harvard University students made the trip south yesterday in a show of broad-based support for Locals 34 and 35, which represent about 4,000 striking clerical, technical and maintenance workers at Yale.
"An injury to one is an injury to all," said Doug Belanger, a union organizer from Leicester, Mass., who brought his 13-year-old son with him to witness the march. "It's also a good opportunity for my son to see what happens when people come together for a good cause."
The march brought downtown traffic to a standstill, while curious residents and students came out of dormitories and stores that lined the route to watch.
In recent weeks, workers sandwiched in pro-union placards have become fixtures on campus, irritating some late-sleeping students with morning rallies that have rendered the alarm clock obsolete.
For many students at the Ivy League school, the strike has brought a largely invisible workforce into public view.
Still, most students watched from the sidelines or stayed home, while a small number participated in the rally.
"It's much ado about nothing," said Ethan Hutt, a 20-year-old history major from Los Angeles, as he stood outside his dormitory watching the steady stream of marchers. "It's a lot of sound and fury. I think they're getting a pretty good deal."
A colorful array of banners and signs dotted the crowds as marchers snaked through New Haven's streets and boulevards.
One banner read, "With Yale's benefits, I'll be working 'til the day I die."
Despite large turnouts at some of the picket lines in recent weeks, more than half of Yale's union members have been coming to work, said Helaine Klasky, a university spokeswoman.
"The rally had nothing to do with negotiations," she said, adding that most of the marchers in yesterday's rally were not Yale workers. "It had everything to do with the unions' effort to gain national publicity."
Both Yale and the unions are bracing for the long haul, as university administrators have implemented a contingency plan that they say could last indefinitely.
The strike, the latest in a series over the past 30 years, threatens to further sour an already tenuous relationship between Yale and New Haven, some professors and union representatives said.
But Klasky said that the university's reputation has weathered many strikes and would not suffer from this one.
"We have 300 years of history that built our reputation," she said. "I don't think a three-week strike is going to change that."
