Beginning in the late 1940s, but really taking off in the mid-late 1960s, came successive attempts to organize the feminized, "pink-collar" workforce of Yale's clerical and technical employees by District 65, the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), and the United Auto Workers (UAW). In 1983, a homegrown organizing drive by HERE to organize these workers finally succeeded. The union, HERE Local 34, won a National Labor Relations Board election by six votes in the face of intimidation tactics by university management and entrenched structures of favoritism and nepotistic promotion. When the university refused to negotiate a first contract with Local 34, workers began a ten-week strike on September 26, 1984. Local 35 members refused to cross their sister local's picket lines and joined their strike. Undergraduates and graduate students mobilized to support them. The strike attracted national attention from inside and outside the labor movement and was a beacon of light in a dark time for U.S. union movements when Yale settled on the terms of a contract with first the victorious Local 34 and then on an unprecedented contract with Local 35 as well. (See Toni Gilpin, Gary Isaac,