At Yale, Protests Mark A Fight To Recognize Union For Grad Students

At Yale University's commencement ceremony last month, hundreds of graduating students and their supporters staged a labor protest. The dispute pits graduate student teachers who voted to form a union in February against a Yale administration that refuses to bargain and disputes the election's validity.

Yale is asking the National Labor Relations Board to review the Local 33-United Here union's organizing tactics. The university also intends to ask the federal labor regulator to reconsider its policy ruling last year that graduate student instructors at private universities are employees and therefore eligible to organize.

The response on New Haven, Conn., campus has been very divisive;