Sophie Sonnenfeld, Contributing Photographer
Following eight months of negotiating, the labor union representing Yale Security officers voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new five-year contract with the University on Friday.
Members of the Yale University Security Officers Association streamed into a conference room at 25 Science Park on Friday to cast their ballots for the contract. The University and the union had reached the five-year agreement on Feb. 7, University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News. According to Peart, compensation was the central theme of the negotiations.
The labor agreement includes employees’ first ever 10-year pay scale, wage raises across the board and new due process rights for officers being investigated under complaints. Union leaders at the ratification vote described the contract as “historic.”
“I didn’t think they were gonna go this high,” said YUSOA President Bob Corso. “But I think they realized that we were underpaid for years. And they made it right. They started taking care of us the way we should have been taken care of.”
Yale Security officers, who YUSOA general counsel Andrew Matthews and Corso described as the lowest-paid workers in the University, will now receive starting wages of $21.75 per hour, an increase from the previous hourly wage of $18.50. Workers’ wages will rise on a nine-step yearly scale after the first year of employment.
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