Word: geso
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Yale University's dispute with its graduate student teachers got downright nasty, and now it has finally ended. Members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) had been trying to obtain permission to unionize for several years, and some had withheld fall semester grades from undergraduate courses--until Tuesday...
...Given GESO's limited membership and poor argument for unionization, we're glad to see this resolution. After a demonstration by students and sympathizers last week resulted in 138 arrests, the Yale-GESO conflict became unnecessarily intense. And as more facts came in, it was clear that the students had neither the numbers nor the arguments to successfully unionize...
...have said before that graduate students are students, and GESO has no right to unionize. But GESO only represents about 25 percent of Yale's graduate students, and, by their own count, less than half that number participated in the grade strike. Regardless, GESO was denied official status as a union by the National Labor Relations Board. Even if GESO could truly be called an employees' organization, these figures would hardly convince an industrialist that a company's workers were ready to unionize...
While the revoking of positions triggered outrage among GESO members, we're not at all surprised or moved. Since graduate students agree to teach as part of a financial aid package, those who refuse to complete their responsibilities are breaching a contract. In fact, the students are fortunate that Yale didn't pull their entire aid allowances, since the university had legal grounds...
...wake of the protest, GESO filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations board to the effects that Yale was "threatening to blackball them from future academic careers." No such blackballing will be necessary, if any hiring institution finds out their candidate for a junior faculty position was a GESO member. The kind of irresponsibility and lack of respect for the educational process that these teachers have shown should be more than enough to disqualify them from future, real employment...