TIERED WAGES

System promotes unrest

* Because of the arrangement, Yale workers can earn as much as $2.40 an hour less than others who perform the same jobs.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Joe Greene took a break from scrubbing pots stained with leftover noodles, sat on a stack of milk crates outside the Yale University dining hall, and gave a five-minute lecture on justice at one of the most distinguished universities in the world.

`All the students here get the same chance to be someone great, like a president, and they gotta pay the same to be here," said the 55-year-old Ivy League cafeteria worker. "They all get an equal shot.

`It ain't like that for workers like me. I do the same thing as everyone else in the dining hall, and I make less than they do. That ain't right. To Yale, workers like me are cockroaches. They'd like to get rid of us all, but they need us to feed kids and clean up the campus.'

Yale has borrowed a cost-cutting tactic from corporate America - the tiered wage contract. Bottom-tier workers earn as much as $2.40 an hour less than others who perform the same jobs. A few workers earn $3 an hour less.

These reduced-wage contracts target new workers in just about every trade: truckers, food workers, airline employees, autoworkers, bus drivers and railroad workers. At Yale, people like Greene, cash poor and without much hope for the future, are the ones drawing the lower wages.

Despite the difference in pay for new and existing workers, Yale officials don't believe they have a two-tiered wage system. They say it's merely a `new hire rate' that was expanded from an existing contract.

Yale and its workers have been brawling for more than three decades. There have been seven labor strikes staged on Yale's campus since 1968. But the most recent labor dispute in 1996 produced the two-tiered wage contract that put Greene on the bottom tier.

That difference in pay for Yale's cafeteria workers is minor compared to tiered wage scales in the automotive industry. In Dayton it's common for an assembly line worker to be making $13 an hour more than the guy next to him.

But to many of Yale's cafeteria workers, the additional $2.40 an hour difference has the weight of gold in their paychecks. Many of them are former welfare recipients, high school dropouts or just illiterate. A few remain homeless. They split time between Yale's Gothic buildings set back from tree-lined streets and their own decaying neighborhoods that are home to decrepit projects and local drug dealers.

They work here because New Haven has lost nearly all of its large industrial employers. The town's workers need Yale more than Yale needs them.

The university is New Haven's largest employer and provides jobs to about 3,500 campus workers. New cafeteria workers start washing dishes or serving food for about $8 or $9 an hour and don't reach equal pay with other workers for about five years. With a higher cost of living in Connecticut, making $9 in New Haven is like earning $7.75 an hour in Dayton.

Union leaders already regret and fear the effects of the tiered contract among their members.

`Tiering is like injecting yourself with a virus," said Bobby Proto, president of the Federation Union Local 35. "You might live for a few years, there's a good chance the union is going to die.

`Yale has been trying to destroy us for years, and they couldn't do it. So now they have borrowed this tier concept from corporate America and are hoping we destroy ourselves.'

Making the deal

The campus unions were busy trying to gain job security for their workers and to erase a labor system that had `casual' workers standing outside by trash bins waiting to see if the dining hall managers needed them that day.

The labor battle raged on for 14 months. It received national attention and included a protest led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The strike was followed by the staged arrests of 300 demonstrators that included AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Then the tiered wage proposal surfaced at Yale in the quietest way possible.

Proto was walking down a hallway before a key bargaining session when he was stopped by Yale's chief negotiator. The union leader was tempted with an offer that would provide total job security for the 3,500 workers and give raises for most of the current employees. In exchange, Yale wanted to impose a permanent tiered wage structure in which all new workers would be paid $7 an hour.

`I knew right there Yale was going to play hardball and make us swallow something like a two-tier scale,' Proto said.

Fearing that a permanent tier would eventually destroy morale among their members, union leaders rejected the proposal and fought the permanent tier.

In the end, the union received a six-year contract with a promise of no layoffs for a decade and no more than a 20 percent reduction in union jobs by attrition.

But the union gave in on the two-tiered system for dining hall employees.

`We know Yale will be back again and want an even bigger gap in pay for new workers," said Meg Reghill, chief steward of Local 35 and a former dining hall worker.

Growing unrest

When she started stocking the salad bar and wiping tables in Yale's historic Commons Dining Hall, it didn't bother Harriott that she was working for $9.11 an hour, or about $2.40 less than everyone else.

Harriott, 43, lives in the kind of neighborhood that visitors are warned to avoid. Her apartment is a modern-day shack that's surrounded by graffiti and garbage. She takes the bus about three miles to Yale and is embarrassed to show anyone where she lives.

Now the single mother of four children wonders what house she could afford if she were not on the bottom tier.

`I'm angry about it and so are some other workers who got cheated out of what we were supposed to be making,' she said. `I was supposed to be a Yale worker, not a two-tier person. But we have to accept it because there's not many jobs around here.'

Most of the Yale workers don't know where to focus their anger. They don't understand why their union agreed to a contract that promotes dissension among workers. They don't know how they can change a system that will likely grow far worse.

Tassie Pappis said she likes washing pots and silverware in Yale's medical school cafeteria. She isn't bothered by living in a one-room efficiency apartment or never owning a car.

Pappis just wants to be paid the same as other Yale workers.

Five years ago, Pappis was making more money as a `casual' worker before she became a full-time employee and inherited an hourly wage of $8.33.

Like most of the workers who make less money, Pappis is reluctant to stage a protest with the union or the university.

`I'm at the bottom at Yale," she said. "What good would it do for me to complain about this when nothing will change? I'm 35 years old and I can't afford to go backwards any more. And that's why I would never vote for a contract that pays workers less than me. Washing dishes is washing dishes. We should all get the same.'

Many of Yale's cafeteria workers realize they have to accept the wage system at Yale because they failed elsewhere.

Joe Greene is one of those workers.

Greene didn't make it through high school. He is the father of seven children, who he conceived with several different women. He also has participated in an alcohol rehabilitation program.

Greene said he's reminded of his missed opportunities and mistakes every time he walks through Yale's campus on the way to work at the university's Timothy Dwight Dining Hall.

`The kids here have promising lives, and I don't resent any of them for what they have,' he said. `I missed my chance to be someone long ago. But that doesn't mean we should be happy with the contract we work under. Those kinds of contracts are supposed to make the poor poorer and the rich richer.'

Not a tier

A student pays about $110,000 for a four-year education.

The school screams of wealth and prosperity. But its 24 dining halls were losing money.

`We needed a new (wage) system to keep more money in the dining halls,' said Brian Tunney, director of labor relations for Yale and chief negotiator of the contract. `It's not a tier. It's a new hire rate that we just stretched out by $1 and one year for new workers.'

Tunney said Yale's wage rates for its employees are among the highest in the nation among universities. During contract negotiations in 1995, Yale conducted a survey that showed its labor costs were `off the charts' compared to other institutions.

`The dining halls were money-losing operations with high labor rates and it was clear we were paying people very well,' he said.

Yale President Richard C. Levin declined to be interviewed about the contract and the university's relations with its labor unions.

Tunney said Levin and his administration have made `dramatic' efforts to improve life for New Haven residents and Yale employees. He cited a Yale-sponsored home-buyer program that has allowed 240 Yale employees to purchase a home in New Haven during the past 10 years. Under the program, the employees receive $25,000 toward the price of the home.

`Yale is not the villain the union tries to paint us as,' Tunney said.

A bad example

But there is a small group of students who support the campus labor unions. The Student Labor Action Coalition, which has about 50 members, was formed during the 1996 labor strike and continues to meet on a weekly basis.

Daniel Lang, a Yale junior and chairman of SLAC, said the university's treatment of cafeteria workers set a bad example for students, many of whom will become potential employers.

`An overwhelming majority of the students here have no way of relating to the Yale employees," he said. "We come from wealth. The students here will be the people offering jobs rather than the people taking jobs.

"This isn't how people with power should treat their employees."

Sidebars:

CHRYSLER WOES USHER IN TIERS
   Wage structuring gets a firm toehold in the auto industry in the early 1980s

POLL FINDS DISCONTENT
  Respondents say tiered contracts are unfair and unions have let down younger workers.

INTERVIEW
TOO MANY AMERICANS HEADING DOWNWARD
   The former U.S. Department of Labor secretary suggests seeking solidarity among employees.

Part Four:

HONDA, NUCOR TRY NEW PATHS
  Pay at automaker and steelmaker is at least partly tied to the company's profit.