Union withdraws petition to represent Yale grad students

A labor union has withdrawn a petition to represent some Yale University graduate students after years of organizing efforts.

Yale officials say they were notified by Local 33-UNITE HERE on Monday that the union was withdrawing its petition to the National Labor Relations Board to represent student teachers in eight of the 56 departments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Local 33 co-president Robin Dawson told the Yale Daily News the union ended the effort because it did not believe the conservative Trump administration and NLRB would be sympathetic to its cause.

Yale officials have refused to bargain with the union after the students voted to join the labor group last year. Yale argued the students should have voted as a whole, not by individual departments.