My piece in the YDN today:

Last night, the members of Local 34 met to commemorate two decades since winning their first contract with Yale. After a string of failed attempts, Local 34 gained recognition in 1984 as one of the first clerical and technical workers' unions at a private university. And after a hard-fought ten-week strike that belied University Secretary John Wilkinson's derisive claim that "the ladies will be back in three days," they won a contract in 1985 that pushed Yale along the long, unfinished path toward achieving the strikers' central demand: equal work for equal pay. Local 34's victory was won with the solidarity of the members of Local 35, who went out on strike with them despite threats of legal retaliation. And that January, when Local 34's membership committed to go back out on strike if need be to secure just contracts for Local 35, the University settled that contract as well. Building that alliance and winning that fight meant defying entrenched perceptions about men, women and work. Yale's 1971 anti-union campaign included distributing a Reader's Digest article called "You'll be a hooker -- or else!" suggesting that unions were a male scheme to force women into prostitution. A letter from a deputy provost argued that unions were for "industrial" workers like those in Local 35 and created "two classes of labor and management, and assumes they oppose each other," and were thus inappropriate for the civilized tasks of clerical and technical workers. Yale literature opposing the 1984 organizing drive declared unions inappropriate for "an institution as varied and diverse as Yale, where value is placed on individual skills and merit." The implicit message of union opponents remained the same: Unions are for rough, manual and untrained labor, not for subtle work involving interpersonal communications and trust. While collective bargaining fits the predominately black male workforce of Local 35, it would wreak havoc for the white women in Yale's clerical and technical workforce. Union opponents also asked why Yale's "blue-collar" union was helping to organize Yale's "pink-collar" workers. Anonymous fliers sprung up asking why "a union of hotel employees and restaurant employees is so concerned about a bunch of clerical and technical workers," while the University intimated that the international union was plotting to merge the locals and shunt new union members in with old. Another Yale leaflet was titled "LOCAL 34 CAN BE FORCED TO STRIKE IF LOCAL 35 STRUCK." And strike they did...