*The academic workers at UCLA and UC Davis will join 2,000 already on strike at UC Santa Cruz* by Hannah Bowlus, In These Times, May 28, 2024 https://inthesetimes.com/article/uaw-4811-strike-ucla-university-of-california-israel-palestine-students-rafah-gaza . . . This strike by Local 4811 is the latest — and one of the most dramatic — escalations surrounding what Jaime and others have described as a long-running effort by UC administration to crack down on dissent, especially surrounding students and academic workers protesting on campuses.
“While the events of the past few weeks are the most egregious acts by the university to crack down on dissent, it is part of a long pattern of the university misusing its power to silence workers and students protesting on campus,” Jaime said. # # # UC student workers expand strike to two more campuses as they demand amnesty for protestors by Mikhail Zinshteyn, Cal Matters, May 28, 2024 https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2024/05/uc-strike/ Nearly a third of the academic and graduate student workers of the University of California are on strike, after the union of 48,000 employees escalated its labor standoff by walking off the job at UCLA and UC Davis this morning. With as many as 2,000 UC Santa Cruz graduate students and academic workers picketing since last Monday, today’s job action brings 12,000 more out of classrooms and laboratories, potentially crippling the university’s mission of educating the roughly 80,000 undergraduates at the three campuses just two weeks before students begin to take their end-of-quarter finals. Workers, including teaching assistants, academic researchers and graders, are striking not over pay and benefits but instead over the UC’s response to pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested by police or suspended from their campuses. Some union members were arrested or suspended for their role in the protests. Core to the union’s demands is that the UC offer “amnesty for those who experienced arrest or are facing University discipline,” the union’s public writings state. . . . UC San Diego issued at least 40 suspensions in the middle of May related to the pro-Palestinian protests, the union wrote in one of its unfair labor practice violations. “Such extreme disciplinary measures in response to peaceful protest activity suppress free expression of ideas and violate the First Amendment,” it read. “We are standing up for justice in the workplace, in a way that directly affects not just us, but our students,” said Anny Viloria Winnett, the unit chair of the local UCLA union chapter. She said the union is taking on a “fight for our ability to be safe on campus, our ability to have free speech and protest on our campus, but it’s also a fight that our students led … and we’re just a continuation of that.” # # # -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30545): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30545 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106380254/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
