California

More than 1,500 graduate students, teaching assistants and researchers are expected to walk off the job at UC Santa Cruz today, launching the first labor strike over the University of California’s response to pro-Palestinian protests in the past month.

Workers will picket from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the two main roads leading into campus, disrupting package deliveries and transit into the university that’s become a hotbed for labor activity in the past few years.

The union, UAW 4811, won approval from its members last week to call for strikes at select campuses throughout the UC.

While many work stoppages are over pay and benefits, this one is in response to the union’s anger over the UC’s use of police to clear overnight encampments in support of Palestinians that propped up at multiple campuses. Some union members took part in those protests. The largely peaceful demonstrations sought to put pressure on the university to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, divest from weapons companies and cut various other economic ties to Israel. After Hamas, which governs Gaza, killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, the country waged a military campaign in Gaza that has killed an estimated 35,000 Palestinians.

Days after police swept the encampments at UCLA and arrested scores of protesters, the union filed an unfair labor practice violation with a state labor relations agency. The union filed similar violations after police cleared encampments at UC San Diego and UC Irvine that also led to arrests of protesters.