Stories
The Black Panthers
in New Haven
The American
Independent Movement
Union-Organizing at Yale
* * *
When AIM set its sights on community organizing in 1970, it was only natural that we came to the support of workers who sought better wages, benefits and working conditions at the largest employer in New Haven, Yale University and its hospital. A blue-collar union, Local 35, had been organized a few years earlier by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union and their leader, Vinnie Sirabella, but since Yale represents the American ruling class, it has always been fiercely anti-union.
We supported a small group of workers, led by Bill Berndtsen, in the Yale School of Public Health who had started an independent organizing effort called the Yale Non-Faculty Action Committee, and expanded the effort to all the university's white-collar and hospital workers. Nina, along with Lynne Karsten, a Yale secretary, and several others passed out union cards to the white-collar workers, while others, including our friend Bill Morico from Fair Haven, worked with the local 1199 to organize hospital workers. Local 1199 was a previously unknown small union emerging from pharmacy workers in New York, considered by Martin Luther King as an exemplary progressive union.
Lynne Karsten reads a statement on behalf of YNFAC organizing.
Nina Adams is on the right.
In 1971 YNFAC hired two full-time and two part-time organizers for their union drive thanks to an alliance with a national union, the National Council of Distributive Workers. Then, both YNFAC and the hospital workers came to the support of Local 35 when it went on strike at the end of their contract, timed for the annual Yale graduation. My by-line is on the front-page story of Modern Times of May 15 with the headline WORKERS STRIKE YALE. In Fair Haven our association organized a spaghetti dinners for the strikers and their families at the East Pearl Street Methodist Church. The strikers won a good contract and the Modern Times story on this, dated July 1, is written by the union agent, John Wilhelm, who would go on to become an important and progressive labor leader at the national level.
The union election for YNFAC November 17, 1971 was not successful, gaining 520 votes, far short of the 900 needed. Again, my name is on the story in Modern Times, quoting Lynne Karsten and Bill Berndsten among others. Nina had gone back to nursing school and was only unofficially involved.
On March 1, 1973, the dietary workers at the hospital gained union recognition with Local 1199. They represented only 144 workers, a small portion of those working at the hospital, but this first victory for 1199 in Connecticut served as a beachhead and in years to come the union grew to become a major force in Connecticut and across the country.
When I joined the Communist Party in 1980, I belonged to its Yale Club, which took as its task to follow up on the unsuccessful white-collar organizing of the previous decade. I approached the United Auto Workers for whom my ex-housemate in Fair Haven, Hank Murray was now an organizer, and for a brief time the UAW paid for one organizer at Yale. Soon, however, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), under John Wilhelm, took up the challenge and brought in major resources and professional organizers, including Karl Lechow who had been involved in the previous YNFAC drive. The HERE union drive succeeded in getting recognition for Local 34 as a sister union to the blue-collar Local 35.
A rally in the Yale Strike of 1984 in front of the always photogenic Beineke Library
My next connection to the Yale Unions was through Lindsay who took a job at Yale just before Local 34 went on strike in 1984, and who became very active in the strike. I took on two roles, one as an organizer of support from faculty members at other universities in New England, and the other as a journalist, covering the strike for the Peoples Weekly World, the national Communist newspaper. We have several scrapbooks full of photos and mementos from the strike which ultimately won a good contract.
 |
Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme