Yale Daily News

With a strike looming, many student employees are deciding whether to cross the picket lines of their co-workers.

Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg said student employees should make individual decisions about whether to participate in next week's walkout. In past strikes, some students have continued working or worked extra shifts, while others have gone on strike.

"[Student workers] should be doing what they're comfortable doing," Trachtenberg said. "There isn't any prescribed action for this kind of situation."

During the strike, which begins Monday, members of locals 34 and 35 will not perform administrative tasks, clean bathrooms, serve food in dining halls, or do any work in Yale buildings. Members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization who strike will not teach sections, attend their classes, conduct research or use any University facilities.

Locals 34 and 35 represent nearly 4,000 clerical, technical, service and maintenance workers. Student dining hall employees are nonvoting members of Local 35. Students who work in department and master's offices work with Local 34 members but are not in the union.

Local 35 Chief Steward Meg Riccio said student workers are welcome to join picket lines next week. She said many students have contacted union members recently to get more information about the upcoming strike.

Christian Dietrich '05, who works in the Trumbull dining hall, said he does not plan to go on strike, but he said he will respect union picket lines. He said working in the dining hall with union members has allowed him to think about next week's strike from the "human perspective."

"You see them as people and not as a mechanism that allows the University to function," he said.

Branford College master's aide Jeffrey Lloyd '03, who works with members of Local 34 who will be striking, said he likely will continue to support the strike if it lasts past spring break.

"We had a meeting with the master and master's secretary and they made us feel easy with whatever decision we decided to make," Lloyd said. "It was a personal decision. I'm not going to be working because I support the master's secretary."

Other student workers said that though they have made decisions about whether they will work next week, they do not have clear-cut opinions on labor issues.

Calhoun College dining hall employee Scott Kroehle '05 said he will not work during the strike, but he does not completely agree with either the University or the unions.

"I wouldn't go to work as a strikebreaker by any means -- that would be aligning myself with a side I don't agree with," he said. "But not to go to class? I don't know that I owe that to the unions."

Aaron Shelley '05, a teaching assistant for Mechanical Engineering 185, said some graduate students approached undergraduate TAs for the class and asked them if they would join the strike.

"Everybody just laughed," Shelley said. He said that while he understands some of the reasons that GESO TAs are walking out next week, the class runs on a very tight schedule and he cannot afford to miss a week.

Local 35 held a membership meeting last night to plan for next week's job action. It is unclear how many union members and graduate students will participate in the strike.