Academic workers at UCLA and UC Davis are poised to strike beginning Tuesday, alleging their workers’ rights have been violated by University of California actions during pro-Palestinian protests and encampment crackdowns.
United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 graduate student teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and others at the 10 UC campuses and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, launched the rolling strike last week at UC Santa Cruz. The walkouts unfold at a critical time in the academic year, as classes end and capstone projects, finals and grading are ahead — work in which union members play a key role.
The planned expanded strike would be one of the biggest actions by an American labor union in support of Palestinians and comes as college leaders face scrutiny for calling in police in riot gear to clear pro-Palestinian encampments.
“I think the union is in a position to really just lift up this issue on the national stage and challenge sort of mainstream discourse and status quo,” said Gene McAdoo, a doctoral student in the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.
UC officials charge the walkouts are illegal. However, its urgent request to the state labor board to immediately halt the strike was rejected by the panel, which ruled on Thursday that the UC’s allegations did not meet the legal standard for intervention.
The academic workers contend that their free speech rights were violated when system leaders called on police to forcibly remove pro-Palestinian encampments at several campuses and activists at UCLA were not protected from an attack on the camp by counterprotesters for hours. Police later dismantled the UCLA encampment, making about 200 arrests, including some members of the striking union.
Rafael Jaime, the president of UAW 4811, was at the encampment during the attack in late April and witnessed the violence. He praised the labor board’s denial of UC’s injuction request, saying it “proves that no employer gets to make up its own rules.”
Demands of union leaders include the protection of free speech on campus; an amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to participation in protests; and divestment by the university from “weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.”
University officials have asserted the strike is unlawful because the goal is “to pressure the University to concede to a list of politically motivated demands closely linked to the protests occurring across California and the nation.”
The union on May 10 filed charges with the state labor board related to the treatment, university discipline and arrests of union members at UCLA and other campuses, including UC San Diego and UC Irvine. The charge accuses the universities of retaliating against the workers and unlawfully changing workplace policies to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.
UC also filed an unfair labor practice charge with the labor board, alleging that the union’s decision to walk out was in violation of the no-strike provision in its collective bargaining agreements. Both charges are pending.
The strike comes amid continuing upheaval on UCLA’s campus.
On Thursday UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and two other university presidents testified before a Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is investigating antisemitism on campuses throughout the country. In his opening remarks to the panel, Block said that, “with the benefit of hindsight,” the university should have acted to “immediately remove” the encampment that pro-Palestinian protesters established in late April “if and when the safety of our community was put at risk.”
Block was also questioned about complaints that Jewish students were prevented from accessing parts of campus by pro-Palestinian protesters.
Later that day, more than two dozen officers in riot gear responded to the Westwood campus to remove a small encampment that protesters had erected.
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