| Graduate Employees And Students Organization |
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The group's precursor, T.A. Solidarity , was founded in 1987 . T.A. Solidarity members voted to affiliate with other campus unions in the Spring of 1990, seeking union recognition and collective bargaining, and adopting their current nomenclature. GESO is affiliated with UNITE HERE as a constituent member of the Federation Of Hospital And University Employees , which also includes food service and maintenance workers, clerical and technical workers, and employees of Yale-New Haven Hospital 's dietary unit. GESO members have participated in several strikes and walk-outs over the course of their sixteen-year history. Since GESO began organizing, the university has increased stipends, provided summer funding, improved health care, and aborted several attempts to force streamlined dissertation production upon doctoral candidates. In March, 2003, GESO members joined members of other campus unions in a one week strike to gain recognition as a collective bargaining agent from the Yale University administration. In April 2003, GESO held a voluntary, not legally binding, but highly publicized election under the supervision of the League Of Women Voters , in which graduate students voted 694 to 651 against making GESO their collective bargaining agent. GESO has described a campain of Union Busting and intimidation tactics by science faculty prior to the vote, and, in an e-mail memorandum to the membership, attributed the result to an unexpectedly high number of science students turning out to vote. GESO has since mounted successful campaigns over the rights of international students, pay equity in the humanities, human rights violations in the university's investment policies, and diversity in higher education, while continuing to push for union recognition. ACTIONS Several hundred graduate students from humanities and social sciences at Yale and Columbia universities went on a teaching strike for five days in April 2005 to demand recognition from their universities less than a year after the National Labor Relations Board denied them of protections under the National Labor Relations Act , reversing an earlier precedent, decided in 2000, that graduate employees at New York University were workers and thus entitled to said protections. University officials have stated that the strike had "minimal impact" on the operations of the school. Jesse Jackson made a brief appearance on behalf of GESO. The university has stated that it will continue its previous policy and will not bargain with GESO. [http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=29423 OPPOSITION Groups have been formed in opposition to the union. These include Graduates Against Student Organization ''GASO,'' an unorganized collection of students in direct opposition of GESO, and At What Cost , which encourages careful consideration of the consequences of forming a graduate student union. Both groups criticize GESO for their "aggressive recruiting methods." Also, these organzitions argue that a sizable number of graduate students who are counted by GESO as members signed member cards solely to pacify recruiters. Neither of these groups has ever evinced a particularly large membership. SEE ALSO
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