At a crucial time of the year, when final exams are underway, the fate of the ongoing strike by UC academic staff could be decided in an Orange County courtroom Friday morning.
University of California officials failed twice before the state Public Employment Relations Board to stop a strike by the United Auto Workers Local 4811 union that began nearly three weeks ago at UC Santa Cruz and has expanded to six campusesThat includes UCLA and UC Irvine.
The university is now taking its case to Orange County Superior Court, seeking an immediate injunction to stop the strike for the third time. UC’s lawsuit claims the union’s strike over alleged violations of workers’ freedom of expression during pro-Palestinian protests violates “no strike” provisions in its contracts. The university has argued in court documents that the strike is causing “irreparable harm” to operations, including the cancellation of classes.
UC says the strike is about politics, not employment conditions and labor issues. In court documents, UC cited an instance in which a union member pressured his department to vote for a strike, stating, “(T)he biggest demand here is divestment. It’s about Palestine first and foremost and our ability to work comfortably at UC second.”
Melissa Matella, UC’s associate vice president for systemwide labor relations, said in a statement that the strike “will continue to cause irreversible harm to the university as it will disrupt the education of thousands of students.” She added that the strike “endangers life-saving research in hundreds of laboratories across the university and will also cause substantial monetary losses to the university.”
UC’s decision to go to state court was called a “brazen” move by a UC Irvine employment and labor law professor who suggested the university may have sued in Orange County because judges there have been friendlier to employers in labor disputes.
“It’s not like they don’t have the right to go to Superior Court,” said professor Veena Dubal. “It’s a legal issue that the court has to decide. But it’s pretty shameless that they’re going just because they didn’t like the outcome at PERB, which is the agency that’s actually responsible for dealing with these issues.”
The union, which represents 48,000 employees across 10 campuses and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, says its strike is legal and unrelated to its contracts because it is about broader employee rights that it alleges were violated during the university’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, including arrests and academic discipline that led to some staff losing access to university-owned housing.
The union represents graduate teaching assistants, researchers and other academic staff who lead discussion groups, grade papers, conduct research and administer exams, among other responsibilities. It authorized the strikes last month, alleging that its members’ free speech rights were harmed during crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests at UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine, among other allegations. It also cited harms to staff who attended the UCLA camp, which was attacked by a mob for several hours without police intervention on April 30.
The union filed unfair labor practice charges with the PERB over those allegations. The UC filed its own charges with the board, stating that The strike is illegal.
The labor board denied two of the U.C.’s injunction requests, ruling that the university had not met the legal threshold to prevent a walkout, while mediation continued at length over both sides’ allegations.
UC officials, as well as the union, have declined to say how many classes, discussion groups or other functions run by union members on campus have been affected by the strike.
Friday’s hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Civil Complex Center in Santa Ana, under Orange County Superior Court Judge William D. Claster.
Thursday night, the union asked for the case to be reassigned to a different judge, alleging Claster is “prejudiced against the respondent or his attorneys or the interests of the respondent or his attorneys.” The filing states the union “cannot conduct a fair and impartial hearing.” If the request is granted, the judge, date and time of the hearing could be different. As of late Thursday night, a new judge had not been assigned.
The judge’s ruling will not resolve the question of whether the strike was an illegal breach of contract. The labor board is already considering that question in a long-term process and suggested in a filing Thursday that it was improper for the university to ask a state court to consider the same case.
The labor board has requested to become a party in the Orange County case, arguing that it has “exclusive original jurisdiction over aspects of this dispute.”
“A decision or ruling issued by the court, without PERB’s involvement, could impair or impede PERB’s ability to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the validity of the subject labor strike under the (Higher Education Employee Relations Act) and to determine the appropriate remedy if it finds any improper conduct,” attorneys for the labor board said in their filing.
In a statement Monday following the labor board’s most recent ruling against the university system, UAW Local 4811 President Rafael Jaime called on “UC to face reality,” and accused it of “waving legal swords.”
Jaime, a doctoral student in literature at UCLA, said UC officials should “stop wasting time and public resources on legal maneuvering.” He said going to state court means the UC has “decided to ignore the authority” of the labor board and “continues to insist that the rules don’t apply to it.”
