Local 35 and Greater New Haven Labor Council President Bob Proto offers a historical perspective on the struggle for graduate student unionization at Yale: In 1995, GESO went on strike twice. That got Yale’s attention, and it started boosting salaries. Back then, graduate teachers earned $10,000 for a year of teaching. Now, they earn $16,000 during their first five years. But there’s a problem: After the fifth year, a graduate teacher’s salary drops to $14,000 or less. Since most doctoral candidates take seven years to finish, the more experience you have teaching, the less you get paid. In 1997, a majority of graduate students, including those in the sciences, signed a petition calling on Yale to sit down and negotiate over salary and health care. Back then, family health insurance cost almost $3,000 a year. A few months after the petition, the university decided every graduate student deserved and would get free individual health insurance. Great victory. Only one problem: Families only got half coverage, and the charges started to skyrocket. Today, their "half" charge comes to about $3,000 a year. In March 2003, GESO joined Local 34, Local 35, and District 1199 on the picket lines for a weeklong strike. GESO’s strong participation earned the respect and admiration of all the strikers. They have learned that Yale doesn’t wake up in the morning and just decide to improve working conditions. There is no progress without struggle. Our great contracts proved that, when you stand up and fight at Yale, you can make tremendous progress. The graduate teachers have accomplished significant victories in their years of organizing. But after 60 years of representing workers on Yale’s campus, we know that these gains are not maintained by Yale’s goodwill. They are maintained by our strength. They are maintained by having a union. This is as important in Yale’s Graduate School as it is in Yale’s teaching hospital. Yale’s graduate teachers today just want the right to choose whether to unionize...