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A four-day strike has ended at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale in Connecticut, where 122 workers walked out seeking better pay, better working conditions and fair treatment. They overwhelmingly voted to ratify the contract that includes first-year wage increases of up to 14.5%, maintains current health care and pension benefits.

With 99.4 percent of voters in favor, the new contract guaranteed a minimum of $48,330 stipend for Yale PhD workers. Yale PhD workers received an immediate 17.7 percent raise on their previous stipend and will receive a 30 percent raise over the course of the five-year contract.

“It’s important to me that my neighbors have affordable housing and that my classmates have access to quality healthcare at Yale Health,” added Sadie Lee ’26, a resident of Pauli Murray and another SUN member. “It’s important to me that my neighbors have affordable housing and that my classmates have access to quality healthcare at Yale Health,” added Sadie Lee ’26, a resident of Pauli Murray and another SUN member. “I am excited to cast my vote for a candidate that will hold Yale accountable.”

[...] New Haven Rising, New Haven Public School Advocates, Local 33–UNITE HERE, and Students Unite Now have long been organizing to have Yale pay taxes to the city. The university’s tax-exempt properties continue to make up around a quarter of all city property, and they’ve been steadily increasing in value while the city increasingly struggles to meet its budgetary needs.

[...] Students Unite Now — a student organization dedicated to improving financial aid transparency and mental health care accessibility at Yale — released a report claiming MHC had failed to address increased student needs brought about by the pandemic.

Paul Hoffman, director of Mental Health and Counseling, added that YC3 and other new hires in the Mental Health and Counseling offices have significantly decreased wait times. MHC has also opened a second office on Whitney Avenue and plans to open a third over the summer, Hoffman wrote in an email to the News.The MHC offices will continue to work to improve mental health access and equity, Hoffman said.

Local organizer Remidy Shareef cites a multi-year organizing campaign, undertaken by community members, teachers’ unions, graduate and undergraduate students, with the slogans “Pay Your Fair Share” and “Yale Respect New Haven,” as the reason for this decision.

Westville resident and New Haven Rising member Ian Skoggard said that the shift in town-gown relations heralded by this deal is as important as the actual dollar amounts associated with it. With this agreement, he said, the relationship between the city and the university is heading in the direction of ​“mutual respect and true collaboration. It is a win-win situation.”

Both Floyd and Mirchandani referenced Students Unite Now as an example of a student advocacy group that has been able to achieve continuity in its advocacy efforts even as leaders come and go. The student income contribution, which SUN had vocally opposed since 2012, was eliminated this October.

“We have come a long way from when Yale used to line up residents by the dumpsters outside of Woolsey Hall to select who would get work for the day. We are confronting over 80 years of segregated development and decades of New Haven taxpayers subsidizing Yale,” the release quotes organizer Scott Marks as saying.

“I’ve taken arrest twice to demand the full elimination of the SIC,” SUN organizer Karissa McCright ’22 wrote in the press release. “I remember sitting across from administrators who said that eliminating the SIC was impossible or just not a priority, even as me and other students shared stories of hardship. If students hadn’t kept fighting, this policy change would never have been possible.”

Protesters retouched a ​“YALE: RESPECT NEW HAVEN” mural message that was painted on Prospect Street in May and called on Yale to do more for the city in terms of local hiring practices, paying their ​“fair share” for tax-exempt properties, and following through on a new tentative five-year contract agreement between the university and its unions.

For Vallati, the worker recall legislation — and the union organizing that led to those bills’ passage — kept her sane during a time of great uncertainty and distress. “I went through a little bit of a depression. It was not pretty,” she said about those 15 months away from work.

Lee told the News that despite his frustration about a lack of adequate action on Yale’s part, what he’s seen from SUN and NHR gives him hope. “I feel really optimistic when I see surprising relationships and allyships being formed between student groups and community groups in New Haven,” he said to the News.

The Yale unions and aligned community organizations fought for years to win a commitment from the university to hire local residents — and then fought again when the university failed to meet its commitments, funneling local residents into lower-paying private contract work rather than high-paying union jobs (a standard gambit at unionized universities).

“Students have demonstrated over and over again over the past six years, that this is a really harmful and unfair policy.” According to Salseda-Angeles, the protests were purposefully planned in conjunction with Bulldog Days to advocate on behalf of the incoming class.

“The current pandemic will only further the divide between the haves and the have nots,” said Yale University junior and undergraduate student body president Kahlil Greene (pictured). ​“I ask Yale to reassess how it uses its surplus. I demand that Yale stand by this city that it claims to call its home.”