.Judge Orders End to UCSC Strike

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the University of California and ordered a temporary stop to all striking activities by the United Auto Workers (UAW) through June 27.

The ruling comes after the state labor board ruled twice in favor of the UAW 4811 which represents 48,000 post-graduate and graduate student workers in the UC system who went on strike over UCLA’s treatment of pro-Palestinian protestors. The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) found that the UC system had in fact committed some labor violations and that the strike could continue. 

“From the beginning, we have stated this strike was illegal and a violation of our contracts’ mutually agreed upon no-strike clauses,” said the UC in a statement. “We respect the advocacy and progressive action towards issues that matter to our community and our community’s right to engage in lawful free speech activities — activities that continue to occur across the system. However, UAW’s strike is unrelated to employment terms, violates the parties’ agreements, and runs contrary to established labor principles.” 

The UAW said the UC’s shopping of the case to conservative Orange County was reminiscent of union-busting tactics used by Starbucks and Amazon. 

“There is a sense of disappointment and defeat but also we just did a huddle and there is a sense of people being pissed off,” said Rebecca Gross of UCSC UAW. “It feels bad. It feels bad that they tried to do this evasion and it worked.”

However, this does not mean that the strike is illegal, according to Gross. 

“It is just a temporary restraining order and it does not mean that our strike is illegal. Decades of labor law has shown us that unfair labor practice strikes are legal,” said Gross.