NEW HAVEN—Yale University threatened to grind to a halt yesterday morning, as thousands of unionized Yale workers—including graduate student teaching assistants (TAs)—went on strike.

Braving sub-zero wind chills, union members picketed at many of the campus’ most prominent locations, including Beinecke Plaza, outside Yale President Richard C. Levin’s office in Woodbridge Hall.

In the absence of union employees, basic functions like cleaning dormitories and performing administrative tasks were relegated to temporary employees or managers. All residential dining halls have been closed for the week—only the central Commons dining hall will remain open, staffed with replacement workers. And some courses have been moved off campus so that students would not be faced with the choice of crossing picket lines or going to class.

But for most at the university, life proceeded as normal yesterday. Students and professors were able to move about freely, and many even expressed surprise at what they viewed as the relatively small turnout.

“The strike’s been disappointing,” said first-year student Jeremy Ershow.

The strike—Yale’s eighth in the last 35 years—comes after a year of deadlocked negotiations and is scheduled to last five days, until undergraduates depart for their spring break. But union leaders said it might continue after break if issues remain unresolved.

The striking parties—Locals 34 and 35 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE), the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) and Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU) Local 1199, which represents employees of Yale-New Haven Hospital—said they were demanding better wages and benefits from the university.

But in statements posted on the Yale Web site, the university defended its stance, claiming that it has already offered the unions a fair deal. According to the statements, workers’ insistence on tying their fate to that of GESO and the hospital employees is responsible for bogging down negotiations.

Union officials said participation in yesterday’s strike was monumental.

Local 35 reported that 95 percent of its 1,100 members went on strike, while Local 34 claimed two thirds of its membership participated, according to the Yale Daily News.

The university confirmed the participation estimate for Local 35 but claimed that half of Local 34’s members showed up for work, the Yale Daily News also reported.

Yesterday’s events culminated in a march led by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson down closed-off thoroughfares in downtown New Haven. At the end of the march, Jackson, along with other prominent area politicians, urged the assembled crowd to “keep hope alive.”

“Yale is too rich for the workers to be so poor,” he said.

Strike It Up

Strikers took to the streets beginning at 7 a.m. yesterday and were out in full force by 9 a.m. They wore red and black sandwich boards proclaiming “On Strike.” Many of the boards were also adorned with stickers, some of which announced the strikers’ union affiliation, while others read “Again!”—a reminder of Yale’s troubled history with labor.