UC Santa Cruz grad workers prepare to be first among UC’s to strike, starting Monday (2024)

About 2,000 UC Santa Cruz graduate workers including teaching assistants and researchers plan to be the first among the University of California’s 10 campuses to strike starting Monday.

Those participating would stop all teaching and wind down their research work after their union, United Auto Workers 4811, voted this week to authorize its executive board to call a strike. On Friday morning, the statewide union president and UCSC’s union representatives announced on Instagram that UCSC workers would walk off the job first.

The union’s UCSC unit chair, Rebecca Gross, said she’s excited and honored that the campus was picked by the statewide union’s executive board to strike first. Gross is a third-year graduate student in the literature department who primarily works as a teaching assistant.

“I think that it speaks to our level of strike readiness on this campus,” she said, adding that the local union will have precise counts of grad workers striking by Sunday.

Within hours of the announcement, the University of California declared the strike unlawful in its own statement.

“This strike is illegal,” said Melissa Matella, associate vice president of UC Systemwide Labor Relations. “UAW’s decision to strike over nonlabor issues violates the no-strike clause of their contracts with UC and sets a dangerous and far-reaching precedent that social, political and cultural issues — no matter how valid — that are not labor-related can support a labor strike.”

The union’s executive board announced May 1 it would hold the strike authorization vote, in protest of the actions some UC campuses have taken in response to increasing protests. The night before, April 30 into May 1, the encampment at UCLA was attacked by counterprotesters for several hours without police intervention.

That announcement was followed shortly by UCLA administrators’ decision to send police to arrest about 200 protesters at the university’s encampment early in the morning of May 2. On May 3, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board.

On May 10, the unfair labor practice charge was amended to include similar incidents at UC San Diego and UC Irvine. The union says the University of California violated students’ free speech rights and the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act after sending police to arrest students and workers.

“The university’s conduct violated the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act prohibition on retaliating against employees for engaging in concerted actions related to worker conditions,” they wrote in the charge. “In addition to standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine, the employees were demanding numerous workplace-related changes.”

The UC has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state labor relations board, asking the state to “order UAW 4811 and its bargaining unit members to cease and desist strike activity.” What might happen on campus Monday is still uncertain.

According to the Council of UC Faculty Associations, which acts as an umbrella organization of the faculty associations at each campus, the UC doesn’t decide whether or not it’s a lawful strike.

“However, the determination of whether this strike violates the contract will be made by the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB), not the university,” the organization wrote in a Q&A about the potential strike. “According to PERB case law, severe unfair labor practices can justify an unfair labor practice strike even when a no-strikes clause is present in a contract.”

Statewide, the graduate student worker union most recenrly went on strike for six weeks in December 2022. Gross didn’t have specific numbers of hand on the campuswide impact at UC Santa Cruz, but said that within the literature department, where she works and studies, about 1,100 grades were withheld during that strike.

Ultimately, the four units of the union signed new contracts that brought them wage gains and greater child care benefits. Across the UC’s 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the union represents more than 45,000 workers.

UCSC campus spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason told Lookout the university will work to reduce the impacts of the coming labor action.

“With a strike, our primary goal is to minimize the disruptive impact, especially given the many educational and research disruptions that have affected students and researchers in recent years,” he wrote via email. “Academic and operational continuity is essential to the University of California’s education and research mission and a core responsibility to our students.”

Gross said she wasn’t aware of the UC administration attempting to start negotiations with the union yet.

“The university could stop this at any point by resolving the unfair labor practices that they’ve committed,” she said.

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