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8,500 University of California workers announced that they will hold a five-day strike at UC’s ten campuses and five medical centers. The strike could begin at anytime, but workers still hope an agreement can be reached. The service workers, who have been negotiating in good faith since August, 2007, voted by 97.5% to authorize the strike in late May. If service workers strike, thousands of medical workers could individually honor the picket lines and not cross it. Negotiations are currently deadlocked.
At issue are poverty wages as low as $10 per hour. Many employees work 2-3 jobs and qualify for public assistance to meet their families’ basic needs. UC wages have fallen dramatically behind other hospitals and California’s community colleges where workers are paid family-sustaining wages that are on average of 25% higher. In addition, when workers have stood up for better lives for their families and better working conditions, the University has retaliated by violating labor laws.
96% of service workers are eligible for at least one of the following forms of public assistance: food stamps, WIC, public housing subsidies and subsidized child care, creating a potential burden for CA taxpayers. Increasing wages would not only help lift workers out of poverty, but could positively impact CA and the low- and moderate-income areas where UC workers live as they contribute more to their local economy. Read More
Actions at Campuses and Medical Centers
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Local 3299 website
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AFSCME News | Previous Coverage
Free Skool Santa Cruz is a completely grassroots effort, a bunch of individuals deciding to act collectively and autonomously to create a skill-sharing network beyond institutional control. Classes are informal, egalitarian, and are held in homes, social spaces and parks. Some of the classes offered this summer include DIY Parenting Circle, Upper Campus Forest Walk, Revenge of the Grammas, Ju-Jitsu
and more... Read More
On Tuesday June 18th, Judge Barbara Miller upheld a temporary injunction preventing U.C. Berkeley from developing an athletic center in the Memorial Oak Grove. Celebrations broke out among protesters as the news was announced. The University says they will continue taking down tree-sits and it is not clear how long the Oaks will be safe.
During summer break, the UCSC tree-sit is on high-alert of a possible attack. In Berkeley this week, police, professional tree climbers, and cherry pickers were used to cut the climb and supply lines of tree-sitters. Similar techniques could be used in Santa Cruz to remove protesters who've been in the trees since November 7, 2007.
June 19th Update: Treesitter and Indybay reporter Cricket, came down Thursday night after 3 days of fighting. He made a deal that resulted in his pictures being handed off to others who could post them to Indybay.
On Tuesday, June 17th, at least five hired contract workers arrived at 6:30am and climbed into the branches of the oak trees to take down tree-sit platforms.
Around 5pm, one woman tree-sitter was taken down from a tree and arrested.
Contract workers continued to take down parts of the tree-sit Wednesday and 3 protesters were arrested.
The University of California's superior work in nuclear weaponry is only the most blatant program of a university that has hired itself out to the US empire's dominant social, political, and economic institutions for nearly 140 years. Whether it is creating increasingly destructive war technologies, developing modern forms of monocrop and GMO agriculture, or producing ideologies that justify conquest and torture, the UC has collaborated with the world's premier corporate and military interests since its inception.
On June 2nd, the Education for Sustainable Living Program (ESLP) class at UC Santa Cruz hosted an evening entitled "The University is Unsustainable: militarism, nuclearism, corporatism and the UC." Student researchers Jono and Leah presented on UCSC's Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) while UCSC alumni Will Parrish and Darwin BondGraham focused on the University of California from 1868 to 2008, from the genocide of Indigenous Nations, the Spanish American War and the Manhattan Project, through to the present: a time of renewed nuclear-militarism and increasing corporatization and privatization of the University.  Read More and Listen to Audio
The UC Santa Cruz administration officially accepted a joint proposal of the Graduate Student Association, UAW and STIHC (Students for Trans-Inclusive Healthcare) for GSHIP (Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan) and USHIP (Undergraduate Student Health Insurance Plan) benefits. Effective this fall, GSHIP and USHIP will include a $75,000 lifetime benefit for transgender healthcare.
On June 6th, George Blumenthal was inaugurated as the 10th Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz during a ceremony on the East Field overlooking the Monterey Bay. Students and workers, organized through the Student and Worker Coalition for Justice (SWCJ) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), rallied at UCSC, marched to the Chancellor's Inauguration and blocked California Highway One during a 10-hour day of action to end poverty wages at the University of California.
UC Santa Cruz Athletic Director Linda Spradley has been faced with budget cuts and has made an executive decision to cut both men's and women's water polo. The players have been given one chance to argue against the cut and they are asking for "all of our athletic programs, friends, families, just about anybody to come rally with us." A meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, June 4th at 5pm in Social Sciences 1, room #110.
A supporter states, "As we now know, it is not the lack of funds but priorities with these funds that is the problem. Water Polo is such an important aspect to many members of the UCSC community that we must come to this meeting in solidarity with their fight to save it." Read More
AFSCME Local 3299's strike, planned for June 4 - 5, has been postponed indefinitely. UC hired the infamous anti-union law firm Littler Mendelson, a firm that boasts on their website about their expertise in avoiding unionization and busting unions. Suddenly, UC Executives claimed to have new proposals for AFSCME and asked for negotiations to resume -- even though they already gave AFSCME their "last, best, and final proposal." In the eyes of a Republican-dominated state labor board, these alleged new proposals were enough to overturn AFSCME's right to strike.
University of California patient care and service staff announced the results of a statewide strike vote that took place between May 17th and May 22nd. Results were tabulated at midnight on May 22nd, and an overwhelming majority of voters voted to authorize the strike. The workers gave UC Executives notice that a strike could begin as soon as June 4th for the 20,000 workers at the University's five hospital/ten campus system.
anarchists write, "Over the last week, we took out six surveillance cameras from the exteriors of four different buildings on the University of California in Santa Cruz campus. This was an act of rebellion to the social control in our daily lives. These cameras are the eyes of the police. This task was easy to accomplish, and would be easy for anyone to reproduce."
The campaign against science experiments on animals at the University of California continues to grow stronger, but not without opposition. Over the last several months, activists have been conducting frequent demonstrations outside the homes of UC animal researchers -- a handful of people with signs, a bullhorn and some literature to hand out to neighbors.
Free Skool Santa Cruz writes, " Saturday May 24th join us for our Free Skool Community Picnic at noon at Ocean View Park. This is our quarterly potluck where students, teachers, organizers, and community members get together to enjoy food, music, and companionship with new and old friends. We have fun, we meet people, we eat, we talk, we have workshops, we play futból.
"The next day, Sunday May 25th, we are hosting our Running a Free Skool workshop from 11am to 2pm at the Big Yellow House. It is our opportunity to hear from other free skools, from students, from teachers, and to discuss what we've done right, wrong, or otherwise. We host folks from Free Skools elsewhere to come for the weekend. Hope you can make it!" Read More
On May 17th, Act Against Torture, World Cant Wait, Code Pink, and Vet’s for Peace participated in a demonstration at the UC Berkeley School of Law graduation to demand that Professor John Yoo, author of the legal memo justifying the Bush administration's use of torture, be fired, disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes.
John Yoo is the legal architect of the Bush Regime's torture policies, the war criminal who wrote the legal memos used under the Bush Regime to justify and legalize torture, the Military Commissions Act, and the doctrine of "the unitary power of the executive." In other words, thanks to John Yoo, if George Bush declares someone to be an "enemy combatant," the person can be snatched from their home in the middle of the night, thrown in a dungeon somewhere in the world, and tortured, with no right to a lawyer and no habeas corpus.
 Berkeley Photos: 1
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San José youth demonstrate to oppose torture
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Event Announcement
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Torturing Yoo
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The Torture Professor
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NYT Video Interview
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Deconstructing John Yoo
There is a story that the UCSC tour guides still occasionally tell about the founding UCSC Chancellor Dean McHenry: Allegedly, during initial construction in 1964, any tree on campus over 12 inches in diameter had to have the chancellor's personal approval before it could be cut. In the construction of the road to the small parking lot behind the main library, there was a spot where the road was squeezed between a second growth redwood and a steep bank. The construction crew and campus planners asked the chancellor for approval to cut the tree, and he allegedly refused and told them to find another way.
On the heels of University of California's ongoing executive pay scandals, UC's Administration is once again being denounced for misplaced priorities. For ten months, 20,000 UC medical and service workers have been trying to protect quality patient care and CA communities, reporting that lack of competitive wages is impacting the University's ability to retain its best staff. After ten months of negotiating for equal pay for equal work, they have reached impasse, and the workers announced they will take a strike vote, running from May 17th-May 22nd.
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