ABSTRACT
On December 7, 1995, graduate student teaching assistants at Yale University voted to go on strike. If Yale did not recognize their union, the TAs would not hand in their final semester grades. Since its beginning in 1990, the fledgling union had been a periodic irritant to the university, jabbing the campus with short strikes and mass demonstrations, extracting discrete concessions, but never winning full union recognition. From its long history of opposition to organized labor, the university had learned that the best strategy to counter unions was to affect a posture of Olympian disregard.1 Like a great Saint Bernard lumbering through the alpine snow, Yale fixed on its distant goals-a $1.5 billion fund-raising drive and a gradual reduction of full-time faculty and staff-never appearing to cast a sidelong glance at the passing protest or occasional picket. In fact, so indifferent to student unrest did the university seem that the union’s greatest fear going into the grade strike was that the administration would not respond at all.
