Women Organizing for an Improved Work Life

A call to organize from the January 26, 1981 issue of Yale Blues: The Newsletter of the UAW Yale Clerical-Technical Employees Organizing Drive.

A Yale Non-Faculty Action Committee flyer from 1968.

Yale blue-collar employees began to organize a union in the late 1930s. A local minister reported on conditions in 1938: “The maids, most of the janitors, and all of the gate men work a seven-day week…. Since almost all maids and janitors are laid off for the entire summer vacation the yearly wage is but $352.30.” By 1968, Yale salaries for non-faculty employees had not improved relative to other significant New Haven employers.

Most of the members of the first union, chartered in 1941, were men. During and after World War II, Yale employed women in growing numbers, especially for clerical and technical work. A recruitment letter signed by Carola Lea, co-chairman of the Yale Organizing Committee and an employee at Sterling Memorial Library, encouraged clerical and technical staff to consider joining the Association of Clericals & Technicians, a precursor to the present-day union.

A recruitment letter sent by the Association of Clericals & Technicians, circa 1968

Yale Break first appeared on December 11, 1969, as a newspaper “written by women at Yale—secretaries, students, student-wives, and faculty-wives—who are angry because of their treatment by this institution designed to serve men. All have suffered because they are women” (Vol. 1, No. 1, page 2). The newspaper was published by an organization called New Haven Women’s Liberation.

Buttons created in support of Local 34, circa 1980s

The “C&Ts” began to organize with the assistance of the Yale union, Local 35, in the late 1970s. Eighty-two percent of the 2,600 clerical and technical group were women, working in 220 buildings across the campus, often in isolation. In 1983, after four years of organization, Local 34 was voted in, and in 1984, went on strike with Local 35. Instead of depending only on striking to win, Local 34 organized the Yale community and the public to support them in their negotiations with the university. The strike by the predominantly working women’s union received strong support from the students, faculty, and professional staff, and led to the successful ratification of contracts in January 1985.