As thousands of graduate school students strike across California over university crackdowns on Pro-Palestine protests, a legal free-speech battle between universities and their graduate student unions has reached a boiling point.
On May 15, 79% of UAW Local 4811 union members authorized a strike for May 20. Predominantly made up of United Auto Workers, UAW Local 4811 represents 48,000 graduate students across California's university system.
"The university violated their obligation to protect student-workers right to free speech and their freedom from discrimination for their political view viewpoints,” said UAW Local 4811 President Rafael Jamie.
“The university engaged in unlawful action, unlawful practices throughout by changing its policy pertaining to protests on campus and discriminated against those expressing pro-Palestinian views."
In response to the union’s strike announcement, UC Santa Cruz and other universities filed unfair practice charges with the California Public Employment Relations Board on May 17, accusing the union of violating the UC system's no-strike clause, including sympathy strikes, stoppages or work interruptions.
The university said in a statement that it asked the state to order union members to “cease and desist strike activity.”
Labor advocates say the legitimacy of the charges depends on whether UC Santa Cruz breached state labor laws by involving local law enforcement across multiple campuses and if it made substantial changes to the workplace code without engaging in collective bargaining.
In the U.S., regardless of a no-strike clause, any union is legally allowed to strike in response to unfair labor practices.
The university violated their obligation to protect student-workers right to free speech and their freedom from discrimination for their political view viewpoints."
On May 20, roughly 2,000 UC Santa Cruz graduate school students immediately ceased work, igniting the first in a series of ongoing active protests. Legal experts say the intrastate conflict will likely grow in intensity and scope.
Known as a “stand-up” strike—a walkout in which workers strike incrementally instead of all at once—2,000 U.A.W. member teaching assistants, tutors and researchers at U.C. Santa Cruz ceased work, marking the fourth major work stoppage among UC graduate student workers.
In November 2022, all 48,000 union members brought the university to a standstill for six weeks, resulting in the largest unionized strike in the history of higher education. The strike led to a 50% increase in UC workers' base compensation.
The legal free-speech fight is ramping up as academic workers' unions at over 100 universities actively rally, turning up the heat on school officials to divest from companies with connections to the Israeli government.
Student unions at Brown, USC, and Harvard are leading the charge, filing unfair labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
