UC Academic Workers Authorize Strike as UC Santa Barbara Encampment Enters Third Week

[Updated: Fri., May 17, 2024, 2:22pm]

It has been more than two weeks since the first tents of UC Santa Barbara’s student-organized “Liberated Zone” were constructed on UCSB’s campus, just adjacent to Davidson Library and North Hall. In the early morning hours of May 1, just after 4 a.m., organizers erected a few tents, banners, and posters in solidarity with Gaza and protesting against UCSB’s investments in the military-defense industry. 

In the wake of protests taking place at public universities across the state, UC academic workers represented by the United Auto Workers Union 4811 (UAW) have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a “Stand Up Strike if circumstances justify.” According to the press release from UAW 4811 on May 15, “egregious unfair labor practices committed at UCLA on April 30 and May 1” were the catalyst behind the strike-authorization vote. The union, which represents 48,000 academic workers, including teaching assistants (TAs) and graduate students, stated that in a “stand up strike” not all members are required to strike simultaneously across the UC system’s 11 campuses — in fact, UAW 4811’s executive has the power to decide “if and when certain campuses are called, and will announce them on a rolling basis.”

“This strike vote is in response to UC’s unlawful actions impacting workers’ rights and the rights of our union,” said Mike Miller, Director of Region 6. “Thousands have spoken, and UAW members across Region 6 are proud to stand in solidarity with our siblings as long as it takes.”

In response to the UAW vote to authorize a strike, the UC President’s Office issued a statement Thursday calling the action illegal.

“This strike is illegal,” said Melissa Matella, associate vice president of 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 UC President’s Office concluded by saying that “the list of demands from student protestors, and even from UAW 4811, are political demands that are outside the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.”

On Friday morning, UAW 4811 President Rafael Jaime announced that the union’s Executive Board has called on workers at UC Santa Cruz to stand up and walk off the job on Monday, May 20. 

“UC management cannot expect union members to watch passively as academic workers are beaten and maced,” said Rebecca Gross, the UC Santa Cruz Academic Student Employee Unit Chair, in Friday’s announcement. “We voted to authorize a strike, and we are ready to stand up! We are hopeful that UC resolves their unfair labor practices as soon as possible. If not, more and more of us are going to stand up.”

Following the UAW’s announcement of Monday’s planned walk-out, the University of California filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the state Public Employment Relations Board, asking the state to “order UAW 4811 and its bargaining unit members to cease and desist strike activity” and “refrain from future strikes violating the no-strike provision in its collective bargaining agreements,” according to a press release issued by the UC President’s Office on Friday afternoon.

“Given UAW’s publicly stated position and the subsequent potential impacts on our students and campuses, we are forced to take decisive action to ensure we can continue to fulfill our fundamental missions of teaching, research and public service,” said Matella.

“We respect and value a productive working relationship with our labor unions,” Matella added. “We collaborate regularly to reach mutually beneficial agreements around employment terms. We have and continue to hope that UAW will honor the terms of our contracts.”

Protest Camp Grows in Size and Support

Since May 1, the encampment at UCSB has amassed more than 100 tents with at least 60-65 regular demonstrators rotating in shifts. The daily schedule follows a similar format each day: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served at intervals throughout the day, separated by periods of prayer, protest demonstrations, teach-ins, and community-oriented workshops. Recent demonstrations included a “die-in for liberation” that took place on Monday, May 13, outside of Davidson Library and entailed protesters blocking the library’s main-entrance traffic. 

On May 3, the central demands of the Gaza Liberated Zone — a self-described autonomous collective of students, faculty, and staff — were clarified in a letter sent to Chancellor Yang and UCSB administrators that outlined three central tenets: disclose, divest, and demilitarize. 

The letter’s demands include requiring UCSB to disclose its investments and partnerships with military contracting companies such as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin and all Public Records Act requests, citing two specific requests on April 8, 2021, and March 9, 2024. Additionally, the demands call for UCSB to “break the recruitment pipeline for weapons manufacturing companies on our campus,” which would essentially entail ending all research and recruitment relationships with technological and weapons manufacturing companies. Finally, the demands call for an abolishment of the UCSB Police Department and the immediate termination of “affiliations with Israeli academic institutions,” including EAP study-abroad programs at Israeli universities. 

Several campus organizations have shown solidarity for the encampment, including the UCSB chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the UCSB Department of Sociology, which recently wrote a letter addressed to UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang and Vice Chancellor David Marshall. In the letter, titled “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” the faculty members of the Sociology Department at UCSB wrote to express their support for the “protests in solidarity with Gaza” on campus. The Sociology Department letter followed in the footsteps of their colleagues at UCLA’s Sociology Department and called on UCSB administrators to ensure certain protections for the student protesters and “engage in substantive negotiations” with the students regarding their demands.

Chancellor Yang’s Late-Night Visit

The encampment has garnered support from professors and graduate students on UCSB and Santa Barbara City College’s campus, community members in Santa Barbara, and activists from Los Angeles and San Diego, and even drew the attention of UCSB Chancellor Henry C. Yang, who visited the encampment at 1 a.m. on Thursday, May 9 — much to the surprise of the overnight demonstrators. 

The affiliated Instagram account of the Liberated Zone released a statement following Chancellor Yang’s visit, stating that the Chancellor admired the “dedication” of student organizers, though the statement went on to criticize Chancellor Yang and the administration for lack of transparency regarding negotiations, believing his late-night visit to be “deliberately avoiding responsibility, and delaying a legitimate conversation with us.” 

Chancellor Yang’s visit draws parallels to the 1968 UCSB Black Student Union (BSU) Strike when student protesters took over North Hall, demanding the creation of a Black Studies Department. In a similar fashion to Chancellor Yang’s late-night visit, then-chancellor Vernon Cheadle attempted to negotiate with protesters at midnight but was turned away by the BSU. 

While the media liaison for the encampment has not been available for comment, the official Instagram account of UCSB’s Gaza Liberated Zone has published several public statements regarding the ongoing protest and updates their schedule and planned demonstrations daily.