SANTA CRUZ — At the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus Thursday, union student workers, researchers and postdocs participating in the stand-up strike organized by UAW Local 4811 occupied area on one side of Coolidge Drive while those in the recently relocated Palestine solidarity encampment occupied the other.
With the strike on its fourth day and the encampment on its 23rd day, both groups support the goals of the other, and have similar demands from UC Santa Cruz and the University of California system.
“We are now in solidarity with one another,” said Palestine solidarity encampment media liaison Groovy Jones. “They are on a historic political strike due to the investment of our UC and other institutions that use the UAW labor for the war machine. And while people are making billions and billions of dollars from that, pay is worse than ever. It’s horrible right now in terms of cost of living.”
Although UAW Local 4811 members at UC Santa Cruz — who represent about 2,400 of the 48,000 total union members across 11 California campuses — were the first to answer the call to strike, others are on deck to join the action this Tuesday such as UC Davis and UCLA, according to social media posts, and union members at the base of UCSC’s campus Thursday.
According to the UAW Local 4811 website, the strike was authorized because, “When faced with Palestine Solidarity encampments and other nonviolent protests by academic workers, students, and community members, UC has mishandled and escalated the situation by taking unlawful actions that cut to the heart of our collective bargaining agreements. Our union has filed unfair labor practice charges in response.”
The charges include “actively risking the health and safety of UAW 4811 members and members of the university community by allowing violent attacks on peaceful pro-Palestine protesters, both by violent anti-Palestine agitators and by police,” and “disciplining employees for engaging in peaceful protest activity demanding work-place related changes,” among others.
“We need to show, not only the university here, but these administrations across the country that they can’t act like this,” said UCSC graduate student Jack Davies at the base of campus Thursday. “Students and workers have power as well and we’re willing to use it when the administration overreaches. I am also in deep sympathy with the causes that people have been protesting about across the country and at the encampment across from here.”
In Quarry Plaza Thursday, around noon, workers painted over the last of the graffiti left by campers. A list of alleged fire code violations are posted on a doorway in the plaza that ultimately state, “All students are to cease all camping activities on university property.”
Despite the prohibition posted in the plaza, the Palestine solidarity encampment continued at its new location at the base of campus at High Street and Coolidge Drive Thursday afternoon.
Jones said that campers are just as impassioned as they were when the encampment began on May Day and that the mass movement of the long-term gathering was in part an escalation after the university administration would not meet the group’s demands. Jones said that the alternatives that the administration provided during negotiations were not acceptable to the encampment members.
“We moved the encampment because negotiations with our administration had failed,” said Jones. “We had provided our requests, our provisions for the purpose of our encampment, which were made by the national Students for Justice in Palestine and something we were echoing as a subsect of that. Those main requests are divestment, student amnesty and an academic boycott of supporters of the Israeli government, cops off campus.”
The group has six demands, which are posted on its social media page. Among them is calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and characterizing the war launched by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack as genocide.
According to the Associated Press, at least 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. The U.N. humanitarian agency said Wednesday that more than 900,000 Palestinians have been displaced by fighting in the past few weeks alone, and now lack shelter, food, water and other essentials.
“The main demand is acknowledgment of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, which the administration has been somewhat vehemently against,” said Jones. “They are still bombing these areas and it is unbelievable that this still happening and no one can acknowledge it as either a genocide or an ethnic cleansing, of which it is both of.”
In response to the strike, which began Monday morning, the university had an updated statement issued Tuesday on its website stating that the University of California filed for injunctive relief against the UAW 4811 strike because university officials feel the strike is unlawful and if it is allowed to continue it would cause the university and its students irreparable harm, as “UAW members play a critical role in year-end activities like teaching, grading, and ongoing time-sensitive research.”
The statement continues: “UAW’s strike is unlawful because the goal is to pressure the University to concede to a list of politically motivated demands closely linked to the protests occurring across California and the nation. While the University continues to support free speech, lawful protests, and its community’s right to engage in the same, UAW is a labor union and its negotiations with the University must be tied to terms and conditions of employment and terms in the collective bargaining agreement. Further, the University has closed contracts with ‘no strikes’ provisions for all UAW bargaining units that prohibit work stoppages during the term of the agreement.”
“UC reiterates our support for free speech and lawful protests and recognizes the seriousness of the concerns its community has raised about the conflict in the Middle East. The University has allowed — and will continue to allow — lawful protesting activities surrounding the conflict in the Middle East.”
The university announced that it will continue with remote instruction Friday and most academic buildings will remain locked for the remainder of this week.
“The protest disruptions at and inside our main and west entrances Monday drove our decision to switch to remote instruction, first for Monday and subsequently for Tuesday and Wednesday,” the statement reads. “We had no plans based on any announced actions to switch to remote prior to the actual blockage of the road and entrances.”
According to UCSC graduate student and union member Brenden Boyatt, his main hopes include providing amnesty to student workers charged with crimes associated with protesting, and for the university to financially divest itself from companies that support weapons manufacturing and research.
“We hope the UC would have its interests aligned with us, the students, rather than the military-industrial complex, so our tuition does not go to acts that we cannot support,” said Boyatt. “And also that we will have the administration a little bit more on our side when the hammer comes down and things go wrong.”