The University of California’s response to protests and a strike by graduate teaching and research assistants has been by turns baffling and defiant. Not only has UC moved to discipline or dismiss some of those grad workers for engaging in pro-Palestinian campus protests, but it appears to be doubling down on a larger attempt to have the workers’ resulting strike immediately halted via injunction.
Its early efforts on that front have failed loudly, but the state’s flagship university system is pressing on. Denied injunctive relief twice in a row by the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), the agency tasked with handling such matters, the University of California this week announced it will take its case to 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,” Melissa Matella, associate vice president for systemwide labor relations, said in a statement distributed by the UC Office of the President.
Nowhere in the statement was it mentioned that there is a mediation process to which UC has committed. As university officials made clear in a later email to Capital & Main, they are dubious as to what mediation can effectively resolve. The graduate workers’ union, United Auto Workers Local 4811, has repeatedly said it wants to mediate to resolve its open issues with the University of California.
“Rather than seriously engage in that process, the university has tried all sorts of legal tricks to end the strike,” said Tanzil Chowdhury, a graduate assistant teacher and researcher at UC Berkeley and a union board member. “We urge the university to come to the table to resolve the unfair labor practice complaints.”
Is there a UC strategy here? It may depend on how far you want to pull back from the current picture.
Over the past several years, the strength of unions among college campus workers has been growing rapidly. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, roughly 50 unions representing more than 78,000 workers have formed on college campuses just since 2022, dwarfing the organizing activity of the decade before that.
And college unions are becoming more strike-prone. The UC Berkeley Labor Center reported in August that 18 campus strikes occurred over the previous year and half, as unions seized a tight job market to press for greater gains. That total includes a 40-day strike by UAW-represented workers at UC, which resulted in dramatic raises for the lowest paid assistants and researchers and significant wage and work improvements for others.
In short, strikes during a teaching quarter or semester have proven both disruptive and effective. Some members of the union speculate that this could be one reason why the University of California administration is trying to use legal force to end this one rather than negotiate.
“UC has unilaterally changed its policy on employee speech and discipline, quite literally attacking our union and free speech rights without giving our union any notice or negotiating these changes,” said striking UC Davis graduate researcher Emily Weintraut. “I enjoy my job. I would like to be able to do it. It’s disappointing and shocking that rather than create a safe environment, the university wages an unprecedented attack on our core rights as workers.”
Asked to comment, the UC Office of the President told Capital & Main that UC is participating in mediation. But “given UAW’s stated public demands, there are significant obstacles to mediation at this time,” said spokesperson Heather Hansen. She added that UC “is committed to ongoing conversations.” Meanwhile, its court strategy goes forward.
The union says the University of California violated its members’ free speech rights by dismantling pro-Palestinian encampments on several campuses, arresting some of the protesters (including union members), and forcing them into academic and employee conduct proceedings — the potential results of which are suspensions and loss of work.
University system president Michael V. Drake has initiated an investigation of how violence escalated out of control on UCLA’s campus. In terms of the union itself, though, the university system has focused its energy on ending the strike by court order.
To be sure, the two sides have made vastly different claims. The university says its contract with UAW Local 4811 contains a no-strike clause that is being breached, with rolling job walkoffs now having been called at UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz.
The union says the no-strike clause is irrelevant, because its members walked out due to alleged labor violations by the University of California against pro-Palestinian protesters that included union members.
Those dueling claims, in the form of unfair labor practice complaints, will eventually fall to PERB to decide. But that is a drawn-out process that could extend well beyond the scheduled June 30 end of the strike.
The union wants amnesty for its members who’ve been disciplined for taking part in protests, plus a resolution of its claims that the University of California unilaterally changed rules about protected speech for its grad assistants. Presumably, these are some of the obstacles to mediation referred to by the UC.
Still, going the legal route is especially curious for UC considering how badly it has failed. Twice, PERB denied UC’s request for an immediate injunction, saying the university hadn’t met the legal standard of showing “irreparable harm” to its system as a result of the strike. But rather than dive into mediation, UC is going back to court.
“Now that UC has exhausted the PERB process for injunctive relief, UC will move to state court and is hopeful for quick and decisive action so that our students can end their quarter with their focus on academics,” Matella said.
That hardly seems likely. Students instead may well remember ending this quarter under a cloud of campus protest, university sanctions and a 48,000-member union of teaching assistants, researchers and academic workers on strike for their rights.
