August 30, 2024

Dear UAW Local 4811 UC Santa Cruz Leadership,

We write to express our unwavering solidarity with UAW Local 4811 - UC Santa Cruz, which, this past spring, engaged in an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike related to the UC administration’s crackdown on the student encampments in support of Palestinian liberation. We previously issued a statement in support of these strikers. And now, we are disappointed to learn that the UC administration began retaliating against student workers — issuing disciplinary letters to hundreds of workers, garnishing wages, and issuing an ”intent to fire” four workers — which would effectively bar them from completing their degrees. Earlier this year, our local endorsed the urgent call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) as well as the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. We also yearn for a free Palestine.

We applaud the courage and moral clarity with which Local 4811 members went on strike, and we are honored to organize in the same international union. As academic student employees, graduate student researchers, academic researchers as well as postdoctoral researchers, Local 4811 members are the backbone of the University of California (UC) system, and without your labor, the UC institutions would not function. Despite this, the UC administration compromised the safety of their students, including Local 4811 members, while trampling on their free speech rights by initiating and enabling the violent repression of peaceful student protestors at numerous UC campuses, including UC Santa Cruz.

We condemn in the strongest terms the disgraceful manner in which the UC administration has decided to punish student workers and chill the fundamental right to free speech and protest. Many of our members are UC alumni, and we are both outraged and ashamed with the administration which has once again resolved to situate itself on the wrong side of history. 

Solidarity forever,

UAW Local 2320