SAN DIEGO (CN) — Unionized academic workers at University of California, San Diego joined other campuses on the picket line on Monday as part of a rolling strike against the University of California’s suppression of protests and encampments against Israel’s assault on Gaza and their schools’ investments in Israeli companies.
“This is my third strike in five years,” said Kate Metcalf, a PhD candidate in communications and science studies at UCSD, and a member of United Auto Workers 4811, speaking to a crowd of hundreds of strikers outside of the school’s Geisel Library. “I’m here today to demand amnesty for protesters and for UC divestment from the Israeli war machine.”
UAW 4811 represents 48,000 teaching assistants, readers, tutors, graduate workers, postdocs and other academic workers at multiple University of California campuses.
Union members claim that university administrators engaged in unfair labor practices and violated their members free speech rights when they ordered police to dismantle protest encampments, arrest students, including their members, and force some into academic and employee conduct proceedings that could end in suspension from their schools and their employment.
The union is asking for amnesty for employees and students that were arrested and are now facing disciplinary action, protection for students and employees’ right to free speech and political expression on campus, divestment from the university’s investments in weapons manufacturers and military contractors profiting from the war, and to allow employees to opt out of research tied to funding from “the military or oppression of Palestinians,” according to the union’s website.
The university system filed unfair labor practice complaints of their own, claiming that the union has a no-strike clause.
On Monday, California’s Public Employment Relations Board shot down the university system’s request to order an immediate halt to the strike.
The university system said in a statement released on Monday that they will file a breach of contract action against the union in state court.
“We are disappointed that the state agency dedicated to the oversight of public employment could not take decisive and immediate action to end this unlawful strike — a decision that harms UC’s students who are nearing the end of their academic year,” wrote Melissa Matella, associate vice president for systemwide labor relations, in the statement.
Kyle Kehrer, a PhD candidate in UCSD’s physics department, and a teacher’s assistant, said that the strike means he won’t be having office hours or grading papers as students head into finals, and he sympathizes with his students, but the strike wouldn’t be necessary “if UC didn’t violate our rights.”
The union first announced they would begin voting to authorize a strike on May 1 after a mob of counter-protesters assaulted students in University of California, Los Angeles’ Palestinian solidarity camp with bear spray, poles and fireworks.
They said the assault, along with police sweeps of camps at other campuses around the country, demonstrated that college administrators had used police violence or allowed violence to be done to students for expressing their political opinions.
Last month, riot gear-clad state and local law enforcement dismantled UCSD’s camp.
The raid led to arrests and law enforcement pushing and striking some students with batons as they tried to prevent a bus of arrested students from leaving campus.
Later that day when protesters forced law enforcement back, Imam Taha Hassane, the director of the Islamic Center of San Diego, was pepper sprayed by retreating deputies.
“Our students, they came and they did that encampment, also demanding the administration to divest from any business that has to do with the apartheid regime in Israel, and they have the right to do this. They have the right to ask their own institution to whom they pay their tuition, not to fund the genocide in Gaza and Palestine,” Hassane said to strikers on Monday.
“You are the voice of truth and morality in this corrupt and broken world. You are changing the American public opinion and the world’s perception of the struggle in Palestine,” he added. “You brought to the world the truth narrative of the brutal occupation of Palestine.”
The wave of strikes began at University of California, Santa Cruz, then spread to UCLA and University of California, Davis. On Monday, union members at UCSD and University of California, Santa Barbara began their strike. Members at University of California, Irvine are scheduled to join on Wednesday.