University of California strike over response to pro-Palestinian protests expands to 3 more campuses

The union strikes at the University of California (UC) in response to how the universities handled the recent pro-Palestinian student protests are expanding to three more campuses in the system.  

UAW 4811, the largest union for the UC system, announced on Instagram that UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara would begin their strikes Monday. UC Irvine will join Wednesday.

“We are asking UC to join your academic community on the right side of history,” said Joyce Chan, a neurosciences postdoctoral researcher and the UAW 4811 postdoc recording secretary at UC San Diego. “We have been beaten and arrested for calling for peace and exercising our right to free speech.”

“To stop the spread of this strike, UC needs to make serious progress towards resolving these ULPs [unfair labor practices], beginning with the withdrawal of all criminal and disciplinary charges against our coworkers who have been arrested for protesting peacefully,” Chan added.

The strikes began at UC Santa Cruz on May 2 and expanded to UCLA and UC Davis last week. In total, five campuses representing more than 31,000 individuals in the union will be on strike.  

The strike was authorized after members grew angry over the universities’ responses to the pro-Palestinian protests that roiled their campuses, in particular at UCLA.

Numerous students and union members have been arrested over their involvement in the protests.  

UCLA saw one of the more violent outbreaks amid the nationwide demonstrations when counter-protesters attacked pro-Palestinian activists, with police reportedly taking hours to respond.  

“We are disheartened that UAW continues publicly escalating its unlawful strike in violation of its contracts’ no-strike clause and encouraging its members to disrupt and harm the ability of our students to navigate finals and other critical year-end activities successfully,” UC said in a Friday statement.  

The school system also said at the time it hoped the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) would impose an injunction on the union to stop “this precedent-setting, unlawful action.”

But on Monday, PERB denied the request, allowing the union to continue its actions.

“It’s heartening to see that PERB has once again upheld the law. It’s time for UC to face reality,” said Rafael Jaime, a PhD student at UCLA and the president of UAW 4811.

“We said last week that if UC did not make progress in addressing the serious unfair labor practices, as many as three more campuses could be called to stand up. UC instead chose another week of legal saber-rattling, and now UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego are walking out. If management wants work to resume, they should resolve their serious unfair labor practices and stop wasting time and public resources on legal maneuvers. We stand ready to reach resolution — where is UC?” Jaime asked.

The strikes are happening amid the last week of classes for UC students before their spring semester ends.