BREAKING: Directly after the Superior Court’s decision to grant a temporary restraining order against our strike, workers at UCSC entered an extensive process of deliberation. This included emergency dept meetings, two campus-wide meetings, and an exhaustive inquiry. Results 🧵 It is difficult to stomach this TRO, particularly given its timing. On our campus, through three weeks of strike action, we had built our leverage ahead of the grading deadline, and had secured the non-submission of at least 12K grades by working with other instructional workers.

UC’s legal maneuvering around this strike, characterized to this point by bloviating mystification and double-dealing, distills so much of what confronts those in the workers’ movement and in the struggle for a free Palestine today. The crude and farcical, but apparently permissible, legal actions of the UC administration are emblematic of the system as a whole, in all its anti-democratic luster and repressive arrogance.

A judge of the California Superior Court in Orange County is set to decide whether to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the strike. This attempt is the UC’s legal hail mary to shut down the strike, after two failures to enjoin us at PERB. 🧵 The granting of a TRO, especially in the wake of PERB’s repeated rulings, would be unprecedented and preposterous. But UC chose to adjudicate in conservative Orange Country for a reason.

The Stand Up strike enters its second week, with two new campuses set to join their UCSC coworkers on the picket. This poses crucial matters of strike strategy, negotiations, and our demands—all of which will require further deliberation and elaboration this week. 🧵 The contribution of workers at UCSC cannot be gainsaid. For five full days, we have shouldered the burden of this strike, its rigors, and the early uncertainties of a novel strategy, which includes the fact that we were first and will, therefore, go the longest.

A message from workers at the University of California striking in support of Palestine and in defense of the right to protest for Palestine. Our translation below 🧵

https://twitter.com/WorkersinPales1/status/1793982897529176375

Thousands of graduate and academic workers at the University of California voted to strike their work in defense of the right to protest in support of the people of Gaza and Palestine.

As we ready ourselves for day four of our strike at UCSC—eagerly anticipating news that workers elsewhere will soon join us—it is worth considering admin’s response so far, both here in Santa Cruz and at the Office of the President (UCOP). 🧵 Our first-ever spring quarter strike takes place among wildflowers and lush grasses at our customary picket at the base of campus. And so far, the springtime allergens have given us more trouble than UC’s grotesque police force.

Today, UC Santa Cruz, “UC’s most striking campus,” is the first to “stand up” in UAW 4811’s ULP strike. We walk out knowing the heat is concentrated on us, expecting admin to be more aggressive than in 2022, while also knowing there is a tidal wave of support behind us. Friday’s announcement, that UCSC would walk out first and alone, has spurred much deliberation around the state and among those following at a distance. These necessary debates will give rise to growing strategic clarity among UC workers.

At UC, encampment organizers, where they have not been routed by police forces, are negotiating with campus administrators. One strategic consideration they face is whether a strike by grad workers will put them in a stronger position to win more than what is currently on offer. Amid many rapid developments in the Palestine solidarity movement, including the real prospect of a system-wide strike in the UC, it is imperative to clarify the relationship between the encampments and any possible strike, as well as the differences between them.

Workers in the UC are preparing to strike for Palestine. The Joint Council of UAW 4811 has adopted demands and the outlines of a strike strategy ahead of the Strike Authorization Vote next week. As Israel rains bombs down on Rafah today, students and workers at universities nationwide understand that our struggle must be broadened in order to be effective. The prospect of a strike in a major university system is a decisive contribution.

Grad workers at UC Santa Cruz are walking off the job today in solidarity with the call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. This year, International Workers' Day means international solidarity with Palestine. Over the last five days, 23 departments have held meetings to discuss how we might respond collectively, as academic workers, to the call for solidarity from Palestine, and to the stunning upsurge of protest and police violence on campuses around the country.

We should not be surprised to find our boss, now that we have relinquished our most powerful weapon, rolling out an array of retaliation for the strike. The most centralized and immediate is an attestation form, asking us to snitch on ourselves and prepare for pay docking. A 🧵 It is worth noting how absurd it is to find ourselves in this situation — that our union leadership, in its haste to end the strike and cut a deal, would not have anticipated this move as a term in the tentative agreement with UC, while we still wielded substantial power.

After six weeks on strike, we have voted to accept a contract. We write as union organizers from Santa Cruz, where workers on our campus voted No by a massive margin. Here is our perspective on ratification. 🧵

drive.google.com/file/d/14phR4l… We must celebrate the level and depth of rank and file engagement throughout this contract fight and strike, which has exceeded any mobilization in the history of our union local.

Another core demand of our strike is the removal of non-resident supplemental tuition (NRST) for grad workers in the UC. The current TA only codifies existing practice, i.e. it makes no material improvement. What makes this demand so hard to win? What are the stakes here? 🧵 This was a major demand for a large portion of the grad workers. The TA delivers very little on that demand. If intl workers vote in high numbers, they have the potential to be decisive. Will they vote at all? If so, will they base their vote on the NRST provision?

There is a common thread that runs through the current plight of US railroad workers and the largest strike in the history of higher education at the UC, which is the question of who sets the terms of workers’ struggle. This question is posed in different ways, for instance, in the largest strike in the higher education sector across the UK, with @UCU, and most characteristically, in the astonishing working class struggle waged by @RMT rail workers in that country.