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Academic workers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have gone on strike, criticizing their employer’s response to an attack on pro-Palestinian activists.
Unionized faculty staff including academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants, and post-doctoral scholars downed tools on May 28 afternoon.
Organizers of the strike say the university’s management of pro-Palestinian protestors, including grad students and other academic workers, has included unfair labor practices.
The strike, organized by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union local 4811, includes around 6,400 academic workers at UCLA, with a union rep estimating thousands are withholding their labor, according to the Guardian.
"Exercise your legally protected right to refuse labor and if necessary, stop work altogether," said Dr. Beth Ribet, a lecturer at UCLA.
The UAW union local 4811 also represents 5,700 workers at UC Davis near Sacramento and 2,000 at UC Santa Cruz, where strikes have also taken place since May 20.
The strikes have stemmed from a flashpoint on April 30 in which a Palestinian solidarity process camp on the UCLA campus was attacked by assailants, prompting a three-hour brawl before police attended the scene.
On May 2, the police arrested 210 people, including grad students employed by UCLA.
The strikers are seeking amnesty for those who were arrested by the police or were subject to discipline by UCLA’s management for being involved in the protest.
"Workers at the university were injured and have been facing severe repercussions and consequences for that activity," said Benjamin Kersten, a PhD candidate at UCLA, speaking to Fox. "So, we’re demanding the university takes steps to remedy those."
Talks took place between the University of California and strikers over the weekend, after California’s public employee relations board ordered mediation.
This is the first union-backed work stoppage relating to the student-led protests taking place at college campuses across the US.
UCLA has reassigned its chief of campus police following the incident and opened an investigation into how the state's police reacted to the protest-turned-brawl.
Some students have voiced frustrations with the strike. “I don’t really understand how the union is turning this from a union labor dispute, into a protest for political means," a UCLA student told Fox.
Mary Osako, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications, has shared a statement criticizing the disruption.
"Our talented students are getting ready for finals, and UCLA’s focus is doing whatever we can to support them," Osako stated. "They’re paying tuition and fees to learn, and we’re dismayed by deliberate outside disruptions that get in the way of that.”
The strike action comes amid a backdrop of employers struggling to manage rising tensions in their workplaces concerning the Israel-Gaza war.
Most notably, Google fired 50 workers who took part in a protest against the company's "Project Nimbus” contract with the Israeli government," after a move to scale back features of an internal messaging platform failed to curtail disruptive debate about the conflict.
