Why University of California Workers Stopped Their Historic Strike

After nearly a month of historic solidarity in support of pro-Palestine student protesters, University of California (UC) academic workers have been ordered by an Orange County Superior Court judge to pause their strike.

The temporary restraining order comes after the University of California filed a lawsuit against UAW 4811—which represents academic workers across the system—citing a breach of the UAW’s contract and arguing that the union cannot strike over “non-labor” issues.

“The blatant breach of the parties’ no-strike clauses by UAW will continue to cause irreversible harm to the University as it will disrupt the education of thousands of students in the form of canceled classes and delayed grades,” said Melissa Matella, associate vice president for Systemwide Labor Relations, in a statement released by the UC Office of the President. “The breach of contract also endangers life-saving research in hundreds of laboratories across the University and will also cause the University substantial monetary damages.”

However, UC workers have made it clear that their efforts had everything to do with their labor rights.

Nearly 80 percent of participating union members voted in support of the strike on May 1, which came after the union filed multiple Unfair Labor Practice charges with California’s Public Employment Relations Board against the university, citing the repression of pro-Palestine protesters at US Los Angeles, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine by police and administration.

Since then, UAW 4811 has been at the forefront of the labor movement’s support for Palestine, joining a broader intersectional coalition calling for justice in Palestine. On December 1 of last year, the UAW became the first international union to call for a cease-fire. Soon after, the UAW was joined by the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.

But UAW 4811 took its campaign a step further, moving beyond a cease-fire statement and engaging its membership of nearly 48,000 in advancing specific demands. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Rafael Jaime, the union’s copresident, said that the union’s goal with the strike was to “maximize chaos.” It was the first time the union had gone on strike since 2022, when workers struck for higher pay and better working conditions—the largest higher-education strike in history.

“The UC’s endowments and retirement accounts…generate a lot of revenue for the university and workers have a right…to have a say in what the university is investing in,” said UAW 4811 Sergeant-at-Arms Jacob Fontana. “This is really a crisis of the university’s own making here. We’ve seen plenty of different universities take that path to peacefully engage in negotiations with their encampments, to allow peaceful protests to evolve on their campuses. The University of California chose a different path here, one of violence.”

Fontana said union support for Palestine was born when workers across UC campuses started exploring the way their research was tied into military activity, leading to demands from workers that UC change its investment policies. In a wave of student activism for Palestine, Fontana says union members were on the “front lines.” When UC permitted its campuses in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Irvine to be entered by police, that was the final straw for many union members.

In a statement, UAW 4811 condemned the use of violent force against students across the nation and expressed solidarity with these protesters. “The freedom to assemble and protest are fundamental rights in a democratic society and core to union members’ ability to demand meaningful change,” the statement reads. “Deploying police forces to arrest and prosecute these individuals is a litigious waste of taxpayer resources designed to intimidate and silence dissent.”