by Paul Bass
The name of the man who helped transform labor relations between New Haven and Yale now keeps watch over the crossroads where town meets gown.
That’s because on Thursday night the intersection of College and Elm Streets — where the Elm City’s central green abuts the edge of the college campus — officially became John Wilhelm Corner. Street sign and all.
Wilhelm led organizing drives and strikes that built Yale’s blue- and pink-collar unions into a political powerhouse in the second half of the 20th century. He inspired a generation of younger labor leaders. He went on to preside over the national UNITE HERE union. (Click here for a previous story detailing his career and legacy.)
A group of Yale retirees spearheaded the effort to name the corner after Wilhelm. The Board of Alders — whose labor-backed majority developed from a Wilhelm-inspired drive to combine campus labor activism with political organizing — voted unanimously to approve the corner naming.
A crowd of 140 New Haveners spanning a half century of town-gown activism showed up on the corner to watch the sign unveiling Thursday just before 7 p.m. The event elicited a combination of personal affection for Wilhelm (shared by even some Yale administrators he faced across the negotiating table) along with a determination to keep alive his legacy of organizing across class and racial lines for justice.
Before the actual unveiling, as day drifted into darkness, the crowd cheered on labor leaders and elected officials who spoke dabout Wilhelm’s legacy leading Yale’s UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35 (now expanded to Local 33). Speakers included New Haven-raised Gwen Mills, a Wilhelm protege who rose through the Yale UNITE HERE leadership ranks, then became UNITE HERE’s first female national president.
The speakers recounted decades of union victories at Yale that lifted the wages and benefits of low-paid custodians, dining hall workers, graduate student-teachers, scientists, and office workers, and delivered retirement benefits people could afford to live on.
Cheryl Bergman, one of the retirees who organized the corner-naming campaign, called Wilhelm “somebody who revolutionized union organizing in New Haven, on this campus and across the country.”
“A lion,” New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney called Wilhelm. “A hero to all of us.”
Wilhelm, who at 80 is retired and lives in Los Angeles, spoke last. He brought the discussion to the present: The current fight against the U.S.’s rightward turn. And the current negotiations between Yale and its unions on a new contract. (He was in town the night before for a mass march calling for a fair contract.)
“I hope that some of you can find a way to spread this understanding that if we all work together and look at what he we have in common — not what separates — my goodness, what a great country we would have once again,” Wilhelm said.
He noted that after decades of labor unrest, Yale hasn’t had a strike since 2003. He spoke of how previous Yale leaders like former President Rick Levin decided to change course by working with UNITE HERE to avoid strikes and improve working conditions.
“My hope and my prayer between now and January,” when current contracts expire, Wilhelm said, “is that you don’t have to go back out on strike, because the university recognizes that it’s done really well while you’re also doing really well.
“But I also know this. And I was so encouraged by that event last night. If the university doesn’t figure that out, you will do what you have to do. And the university will learn it all over again.”
Then Wilhelm’s son Tom ascended the stairs to the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church, which houses UNITE HERE’s offices. He tugged on a string. And his father’s name emerged in public sight right between “Elm” and “College.”
“Isn’t it wonderful,” observed U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Wilhelm collaborator since the 1970s, “that that sign is going to face the university.”
Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (birth name: Warren Wilhelm Jr.) in the crowd at his cousin’s corner-naming ceremony.