Monthly Archives: May 2024

Original online here.

UCLA Strike Organizing Toolkit

A RANK-AND-FILE GUIDE TO ORGANIZING FOR THE UAW 4811 STRIKE AUTHORIZATION VOTE AND PREPARING TO STRIKE

On May 13–15, UAW 4811 members will vote on whether to strike in response to UC’s violent repression of student- and worker-led pro-Palestine, anti-genocide encampments. The Joint Council of our union has adopted strike demands, which represent an important step toward divestment. These demands, however, fail to address the needs of many UCLA students and workers who have faced sustained legal and extralegal violence on campus, and they present a narrow approach to divestment that focuses on Israel’s current war on Gaza, effectively normalizing the ongoing occupation of Palestine. We have collectively and democratically developed the expanded UCLA strike demands below in response to these limitations, in alignment with the demands set out by UCLA Students for Justice in Palestine, the UC Divest coalition, and UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

Concerningly, UAW 4811 leadership has already made clear, even before our strike authorization vote (SAV), that they see this strike as an opportunity to “de-escalate” and coopt our movement energies—to cede our leverage in the fight for true divestment and cops off campus so that university business as usual can resume. Nonetheless, we urge all UAW 4811 members to organize toward a YES vote in our SAV on May 13–15. We offer this toolkit to guide our organizing toward a successful SAV and a powerful, effective strike. We lay out plans for building the power needed to win our ambitious demands—including, if necessary, preparing to take action independently of official union leadership. We also offer an analysis of the conditions at UCLA that have shaped our rank-and-file strategy and a comparison of our expanded strike demands with the official ones. 

Our Demands

1. Divestment of all UC-wide and UCLA Foundation funds from companies and institutions that are complicit in the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide of the Palestinian people.
2. Disclosure of all UCLA Foundation and UC-wide assets and funding sources, including but not limited to contracts, grants, gifts, and investments. These should be presented in a publicly available, publicly accessible, perpetually up-to-date database.
3. Amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to involvement in or support for the Palestine Solidarity Encampment. UCLA must cover all medical bills related to injuries sustained by academic employees, students, faculty, and staff at or as a result of their support for the encampment.
4. Cops Off Campus: The immediate removal of LAPD, LASD, CHP, and other “external” law enforcement from campus; the dissolution of UCPD and reallocation of those funds to support students, especially Black, brown, and Palestinian students; the exploration, development, and implementation of non-carceral, democratically controlled forms of securing community safety; the abolition of policing on campus; and the immediate termination of Rick Braziel and dissolution of the Office of Campus Safety.
5. A codified, grievable commitment to protect free speech and political expression on campus, including protests and expressions of support for Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.
6. Boycott: Sever all UC-wide connections to Israeli universities, including study abroad programs, fellowships, seminars, and research collaborations, and UCLA’s Nazarian Center.
7. Transitional funding that empowers researchers to reject employment from funding sources tied to the military or to oppression of Palestinians. The UC must provide centralized transitional funding to workers whose funding is tied to the military or foundations that support Palestinian oppression.
8. Gene Block’s immediate resignation in disgrace for his profound disregard for the safety of UCLA students and workers since the start of the encampment.

Strike Strategy and Timeline

From now until the May 13–15 strike authorization vote (SAV): ORGANIZE. Build mass support for an overwhelming YES vote in the SAV in order to win the protection of a sanctioned ULP strike. Simultaneously, build mass support for our expanded demands and a commitment to strike until those demands are met. Prepare for the possibility of grade withholding by ensuring all your graded materials are off university platforms like Canvas. Inoculate against threats of cooptation and concessionary agreements: learn from the negative examples of Northwestern, Brown, and elsewhere, in which promises of task forces, exploratory committees, and student presentations to be convened at some later date defer the possibility of true divestment while coercing students to relinquish the main source of our leverage: our student encampments and protests. Task forces are where movements go to die.

• Organize a town hall in your department: The purpose of the town hall is to gauge the willingness of members to vote YES and strike in a sanctioned ULP strike—and, if necessary, an unsanctioned wildcat strike. Discuss the risks honestly and collectively determine a participation threshold: What percentage of the department needs to participate for grad workers in that department to feel comfortable striking in a sanctioned strike? In a wildcat? Track individual and department positions in a secure spreadsheet, which you can also use for tracking the results of one-on-one outreach. 

• Phone- and text-banking using the following script:

(First text) Hi [their name]! I’m [your name], a member of UAW 4811. In light of UCLA Administration’s violent attacks on the Palestine Solidarity Encampment, our union will hold a strike authorization vote between next Monday (5/13) and Wednesday (5/15). Given UCLA’s blatant disregard for student safety, rank-and-file union members are organizing toward a strike to demand disclosure, boycott, divestment, and cops off campus. We need as many people as possible to vote YES on May 13-15 and to join in striking—to keep the UC from profiting off our labor and investing that money in genocide. Can we count on you to vote YES and join the strike?

(Second text, if they respond positively) Great, thanks for your support! We know the UC won’t give in easily, and union leadership may accept a deal that concedes our major demands. We have to prepare to continue striking until the UC meets our demands. Though the risks will be greater, we are safer and more powerful together. Will you join us to organize in solidarity with our students and with Palestinians? Do you feel willing to continue striking until the UC meets our demands? We understand that you may have more questions about what this might look like, so we’re happy to discuss any concerns further on Signal.

(Second text, if they are apprehensive about our demands) I understand your apprehension about striking/about [X] demand. We are also organizing toward a strike to protect UCLA students’ and student employees’ rights to free speech and protest. Both UCLA’s complicity in the violent attack on our fellow students at the encampment and their willingness to call in a large, militarized contingent of law enforcement to crush a political protest threaten everyone in our community. Voting YES on May 13–15 and joining the strike means you help push the UC to protect our rights to free speech and to be on campus without fear of overwhelming police presence.

• Organize large, visible teach-ins and rallies in support of striking. Coordinate with undergrads, grad affinity groups, faculty, staff, other campus unions, etc. Some ideas for teach-ins: History of Palestine/Palestine Solidarity Movements; Histories of Third World Liberation Strikes and Divestment Encampments; Cops Off Campus. Prioritize community safety in organizing any public on-campus gathering.

• Build with undergraduates, lecturers, ladder-rank faculty, staff, and community members in support of a strike. Our strike is more powerful when we have broad support. Faculty, staff, and undergraduate students, who are at the forefront of the movement, are also angry about how the UC has managed student protests, and harnessing their anger in support of our strike will make us more effective in fighting for our demands. With your coworkers, begin mapping out your department: ways to collaborate with undergrads; faculty willing to strike in solidarity or refuse to pick up our struck labor; faculty who will commit to not retaliating against striking students, and those who will likely retaliate or pick up our struck work; and other avenues for building solidarity. Resources exist to help faculty understand their rights in the event of our strike. 

• Mobilize the labor movement: Reach out to the other unions on campus and throughout the UC system, including AFSCME, AFT, SEIU, UPTE, and Teamsters, as well as the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. The rest of the labor movement, in Los Angeles and beyond, can provide crucial external support for our strike.

In organizing this way for the SAV, we build power for a strong and effective sanctioned strike, but we also build power and solidarity for the contingency that a non-sanctioned wildcat strike becomes necessary in order to win our demands. This contingency may arise at one of two points in our strike timeline:

• The SAV is unsuccessful.
• Our strike negotiating team accepts a concessionary agreement that fails to meet our demands, and the membership vote to accept the agreement succeeds.

The risks of an illegal wildcat strike are significant—for some even more than others—but they are mitigated by our strength in numbers. For this reason, we organize for all contingencies from the start. We have ongoing, explicit discussions about risk among members, and develop and share resources on non-sanctioned strikes. We commit to striking in solidarity with the student encampments and with Palestinians, who have bravely withstood Zionist genocide for seven months, and for seventy-five years before that. We assess the levels of risk we are able to take on and contribute to strike efforts accordingly. We ask each other: What are you willing to do to secure justice and real safety for your colleagues and your students? What are you willing to do for Palestine?

The context

On the night of Tuesday April 30, after days of escalating Zionist harassment, a group of several hundred Zionist fascists attacked the UCLA student encampment. They fired at least 6 large fireworks and hurled blocks of wood into the camp, rushed the barricades, shot tear gas at students, sprayed bear mace and pepper spray, hit us with poles, and otherwise attempted to harass and injure students. A number of students were beaten severely, and over 20 sustained major injuries, including blunt force trauma to the head, and had to be treated at the emergency department. This siege continued for over three hours, during which time UCPD, CHP, and private security watched but did nothing to stop the assault. Chancellor Gene Block watched from inside Royce Hall but made no effort to fulfill his responsibility to protect students. The attackers were allowed to leave the scene freely, and none are known to have been arrested.

Chancellor Block and the UCLA Administration had advance knowledge of the attack. They deliberately stood by in hopes that the Zionist attackers would destroy the encampment, or at least that the resulting violence would provide a pretext for police intervention. Indeed, the following night, UCLA admin seized on the attack as a pretext to invite UCPD, LAPD, LA Sheriff’s Department, and the California Highway Patrol to attack students and destroy the encampment. Cops assaulted the encampment for some 5 hours. They shot flash bang grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets at protestors, causing head trauma and broken bones, and arrested at least 132 students and faculty, among them members of our union. On Monday, May 6, cops arrested another 42+ students and grad workers for simply gathering on campus and pinned many with unfounded conspiracy charges.

Chancellor Block’s unilateral creation of the Office of Campus Safety, reporting directly to him and headed by former Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel, further entrenches fascist policing on our campus. Recent events have reaffirmed that the police do nothing but harm: on April 30 they did nothing, and since then they have caused incalculable harm to us, our students, and our colleagues. We uplift the demands of the UCLA encampment, and of the Black and brown grad workers who have led this fight in past contract negotiations, in demanding cops off our campus immediately. No decolonization without abolition; no abolition without decolonization.

UAW 4811 Demands	Expanded UCLA Rank-and-File Demands
Amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to protest.	Amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to involvement in or support for the Palestine Solidarity Encampment. UCLA must cover all medical bills related to injuries sustained by academic employees, students, faculty, and staff at or as a result of their support for the encampment.
Right to free speech and political expression on campus.	A codified, grievable commitment to protect free speech and political expression on campus, including protests and expressions of support for Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Divestment from UC’s known investments in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.	Divestment of all UC-wide and UCLA Foundation funds from companies and institutions that are complicit in the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide of the Palestinian people.
Disclosure of all funding sources and investments, including contracts, grants, gifts, and investments, through a publicly available, publicly accessible, and up-to-date database.	Disclosure of all UCLA Foundation and UC-wide assets and funding sources, including but not limited to contracts, grants, gifts, and investments. These should be presented in a publicly available, publicly accessible, perpetually up-to-date database.
Empower researchers to opt out from funding sources tied to the military or oppression of Palestinians. The UC must provide centralized transitional funding to workers whose funding is tied to the military or foundations that support Palestinian oppression.	Transitional funding that empowers researchers to reject employment from funding sources tied to the military or to oppression of Palestinians. The UC must provide centralized transitional funding to workers whose funding is tied to the military or foundations that support Palestinian oppression.
	Cops Off Campus: The immediate removal of LAPD, LASD, CHP, and other “external” law enforcement from campus; the dissolution of UCPD and reallocation of those funds to support students, especially Black, brown, and Palestinian students; the exploration, development, and implementation of non-carceral, democratically controlled forms of securing community safety; the abolition of policing on campus; and the immediate termination of Rick Braziel and dissolution of the Office of Campus Safety.
	In line with demands from faculty and SJP, Gene Block’s immediate resignation in disgrace for his profound disregard for the safety of UCLA students and workers since the start of the encampment.
	Boycott: Sever all UC-wide connections to Israeli universities, including study abroad programs, fellowships, seminars, and research collaborations, and UCLA’s Nazarian Center.