I have no idea what it's like at Yale, but I have known people in colleges in Ireland who are not allowed to do any maintenance on their own machines for IT union reasons.
Yeah, we have that too, they call it stealing work. But it has to do with unions and exclusivity deals they work out with companies.
I worked for a company that only union members from facilities were allowed to rearrange your office. So moving a file cabinet was impossible. You couldn't do it without stealing work, and there was no way your department would pay to have something like that done for you. The same went for changing the height of your height adjustable desk, getting a whiteboard screwed on the wall (instead of leaning against the wall while sitting on the desk) or even moving your computer from one side of the desk to the other.
Sometimes you just had to do it anyway and hope the union guy who empties your trash doesn't notice.
