More than 50 Yale students were arrested this week along with Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapoport and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney during a protest supporting two labor unions engaged in a contract dispute with Yale University.

Police estimated that approximately 1,500 people including workers, clergy, labor leaders and students took part in the five-block march which began at the New Haven city hall Tuesday.

The protesters were arrested for disturbing the peace, a penalty that carries an $84 fine, according to Yale senior Kate E. Andrias, one of the students arrested.

"Yale is supposed to be one of the best universities in the country," she said. "It has to be the best all the way through," including the way it treats it workers.

The protesters were supporting Local 34, which represents clerical and technical workers, and Local 35, which represents service and maintenance workers, in their continuing contract disputes with the university.

Yale is seeking the flexibility to subcontract and in return is offering union members a 10-year job guarantee. The university also promises to maintain an 85 percent staffing level of union jobs.

The protesters criticized the university's stance in dealing with the labor unions.

"The values of social responsibility and community are things that the [Yale] administration purports to uphold and teach, and I think that their labor practices should be in conjunction with those values," Andrias said.

Deborah Chernoff, spokesperson for Locals 34 and 35, said the Yale situation is "unique" because the public is more easily convinced that the goals of the university are "promoting research and education and disseminating knowledge," rather than "making a lot of money and breaking the unions."

The protest was an attempt to raise public awareness of the business as well as educational interests of the university, Chernoff said.

"[We are] committed to not permitting the university to...transform decent jobs at Yale to low wage, no benefit jobs," she said.

The protest is the most recent in a series of union activities including a strike by Local 35 in March that shut down 22 student dining halls.

Tom Canel, secretary of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), said he fully supports the Yale unions.

"What's happening at Yale is very important for all workers in New England," he said. "They are fighting for very important and basic rights and needs."

Canel said that HUCTW's 3,500 members have raised approximately $6,000 for "our friends at Yale."

"Their fight is our fight," said Robert L. Feldstein '96-'97, who along with Canel and two other people were picketing outside Mass. Hall last night