Alders OK Street Closure For Postdoc-Organizing Rally

by Thomas Breen

The Board of Alders voted Thursday night to approve the temporary closure of two blocks of College Street later this month to allow for a rally by Yale’s graduate student-teacher union — which is now looking to organize the university’s postdoctoral workers.

Local legislators took that vote during their latest full board meeting at City Hall.

They voted unanimously to approve an order submitted by Local 33-UNITE HERE President (and Board of Zoning Appeals commissioner) Adam Waters to close College Street between Grove Street and Elm Street from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Nov. 19.

“Postdoctoral workers at Yale University are organizing to form a union with Local 33–UNITE HERE,” Waters wrote in an Oct. 30 letter to the Board of Alders. “UNITE HERE represents thousands of workers on campus. Our contracts provide dignity and security for members and their families and strengthen our community.”

Waters said that the Nov. 19 requested street closure will allow for the union to host a public rally to further this campaign to organize postdocs.

The postdoc-organizing rally is set to take place roughly two months after 2,000 people flooded the streets of downtown to call for higher wages and increased funding for the city amidst contract negotiations involving two of the university’s most politically influential unions, Locals 34 and 35. At that Sept. 26 rally, Yale postdoc Bryan Mckiver announced that “a majority of postdocs have signed union cards.” Local 34 Organizing Director Barbara Vereen also said at that event that postdocs would add 1,300 members to the union’s ranks.

The rally also comes nearly three years after Yale graduate teachers and researchers voted overwhelmingly to form a union, Local 33, in January 2023. Roughly 3,214 Yale graduate students, teachers, and researchers were eligible to vote in that election. In December 2023, the university-recognized Local 33 ratified its first contract.

According to Local 33’s website, postdocs are currently unionized at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Rutgers, and UConn, among other universities.

That website also states: “Postdocs at Yale have identified many issues that could be addressed by a union and contract: pay that keeps up with the rising cost of living; protections for international employees; support for parents; and real recourse in situations of abuse, discrimination, or harassment. After we win recognition of our union, postdoc union members will collectively determine priorities for our contract and any tentative contract would be subject to a ratification vote.”

In a text-message comment provided to the Independent for this article, Waters wrote, “Hundreds of postdocs have signed union cards — the first step towards joining the nearly 3,000 unionized graduate workers at Yale. Yale graduate workers have an industry-leading contract that has changed so many of our lives and postdocs deserve those same basic rights and protections.”