Nearly a third of the academic and graduate student workers of the University of California are on strike, after the union of 48,000 members escalated its labor standoff by walking off the job at UCLA and UC Davis this morning.
With as many as 2,000 UC Santa Cruz graduate students and academic workers picketing since last Monday, today’s job action brings 12,000 more out of classrooms and laboratories, potentially crippling the university’s mission of educating the roughly 80,000 undergraduates at the three campuses just two weeks before students begin to take their end-of-quarter finals.
Workers, including teaching assistants, academic researchers and graders, are striking not over pay and benefits but instead over the UC’s response to pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested by police or suspended from their campuses. Some union members were arrested or suspended for their role in the protests. Core to the union’s demands is that the UC offer “amnesty for those who experienced arrest or are facing University discipline,” the union’s public writings state.
Some 60 academic workers began picketing at Royce Quad at UCLA by 9 a.m., where just weeks ago students at a large pro-Palestinian encampment were attacked by counter-protesters.
“UC, UC you’re no good, treat your workers like you should,” the picketing academic workers chanted, their ranks gradually growing as more striking workers arrived under a gray sky. “When free speech is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back,” went another chant, the rhythmic pulses of a snare drum accompanying the picketers, who grew to more than 200 by 10:30 a.m.
Origins of strike
UC’s Office of the President calls the strike illegal, saying that its contract with the union — itself the result of a six-week long strike in late 2022 — includes a no-strike provision. The union, UAW 4811, vehemently disagrees with that analysis, citing legal precedent that a union can strike over unfair labor practices that fall outside the scope of a union contract. It’s a view shared by at least one UCLA law professor.
Both sides have leaned heavily on the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to adjudicate their disputes.
Two days after police swept the encampments at UCLA and arrested scores of protesters, the union filed an unfair labor practice violation with the labor relations board. The union then filed similar violations after police cleared encampments at UC San Diego and UC Irvine that also led to arrests of protesters — and another alleging that the UC changed its disciplinary rules unilaterally to punish academic workers.
“By summoning the police to forcibly arrest and/or issuing interim suspensions to these employees, the University has violated their employee rights,“ the union wrote in one of its submissions to the labor relations board. The union says its workers were not only rallying against the war in Gaza but also seeking ways to remove academic research funding sources tied to the U.S. military. Workers also oppose “the discrimination and hostile work environment directed towards Palestinian, Muslim, and pro-Palestine Jewish employees and students.”
Unlike a systemwide strike, this “stand up” strike will pursue labor stoppages at certain campuses, a strategy employed by Detroit autoworkers in their successful campaign for higher compensation last year. The approach is meant to apply gradual pressure to management.
While the strike is technically distinct from the larger protest movement against the war, the two movements are related. Last Thursday, several hundred UCLA members of the UAW 4811 held a rally in support of their impending strike. Moments later, they joined a student-led protest demanding that the UC call for a ceasefire and divest from weapons manufacturers and the Israeli economy. That same day, protesters erected a short-lived encampment and temporarily took over a campus building before being pushed out by police.
It was a clear sign that, despite hundreds of arrests in May, thousands of students, union members and some faculty remain passionate about their pro-Palestinian advocacy.
