UC UAW 2865 Strikers Support Railway Workers: Your Fight Is Our Fight!

UC striking UAW 2865 workers and undergraduate students rallied at the UCB campus
on December 6, 2022 to build solidarity and connections between the UC UAW strike
and the struggle of railway workers. Christopher Geary who is an striking UAW 2865
from UCSC and also with UCSC4COLA and Pay Us More UCSC spoke at the rally.

For More Media:
Hundreds of UC UAW Strikers March & Rally In Sacramento At Capitol "Union Busting Is Disgusting”
https://youtu.be/TNhtqphpVbM

The UC UAW Workers Strike & The Historic Fight Against Privatization & For Housing At The University
https://youtu.be/v-jsYnyvRIk

The high cost of housing is a UC-created crisis
https://www.sfexaminer.com/our_sections/forum/the-high-cost-of-housing-is-a-a-uc-created-crisis/article_76149e18-701e-11ed-bad3-337f34ad12d1.html

UAW UC Workers Statewide Strike For A Living Wage & Housing
https://youtu.be/vKI80Pg3ASc

UC assets grow by $38 billion in 2021 to $168 billion, with endowment returning 33.7 percent and pension up 30.5 percent
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-assets-grow-38-billion-2021-168-billion-endowment-returning-337-percent-and-pension

UAW 2865 UCB Grad Students March To Sproul Hall To Demand COLA & Against Union Busting At UCSC
https://youtu.be/9QspYy1sY1I

UCSC Graduate Students Wildcatting For Survival
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FoEkSBrFUk

Justice For UCSC Graduate Students-UCSC Wildcat Striker Natalie Ng Speaks Out To UC Management
https://youtu.be/P4RvjIj3IUo

UCSF Professors Support Striking Graduate Students
http://ucscfa.org/2019/12/scfa-solidarity-with-graduate-students/

Graduate Student Strikes Are Spreading in California
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wxe45b/graduate-student-strikes-are-spreading-in-california

UAW 2865 Statement On 54 Terminated Santa Cruz Workers
http://uaw2865.org/uaw-2865-statement-on-54-terminated-santa-cruz-workers/f

UAW 2865 Gradute Union Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Against University
http://uaw2865.org/uc-student-worker-union-files-unfair-labor-practice-charge-against-the-university/

Across UC System, Graduate Students Unite for COLA Movement
http://dailynexus.com/2020-02-13/across-uc-system-graduate-students-unite-for-cola-movement/

Janet Must Go! UC Workers Want UC Pres Napalitano Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htslfoHPWvY

For More Information:
Pay Us More
@payusmoreucsc
https://linktr.ee/payusmoreucsc
Labor Video Project
http://www.labormedia.net

UC UAW Strikers: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 the University and College Union (UCU), and most characteristically, in the astonishing working-class struggle waged by the Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) in that country.

As the house and senate compete in a perpetual race to the bottom, [a race they now think is over], [a race to the bottom] exemplified by the suppression of the will of rail workers in the US, workers must carve out a unified path forward even as previous options are seemingly foreclosed.

For us, this means further widening the window created by tens of thousands of academic workers at a time when so many forces (our employer, government, and labor liberals alike) conspire to close the gap between the transformative character of our strike demands and the status quo that generated them.

At UC Santa Cruz, [at UC Berkeley, and across the University of California], we are building towards a long-haul strike. We have argued that only through continuing to utilize and sharpen the strike ‘weapon’ can we win our demands.

This holds true whether or not a tentative agreement is reached within the coming hours or days. Whatever “no vote” campaign emerges must understand itself as a phase within the arc of the long-haul strike.

These demands, it must be stressed, are *not* impossible to achieve. They are within reach if our fight continues to understand them as principles guiding our strategy, rather than bargaining chips to be marshalled or discarded whenever it is most convenient.

Those who deem capitulation the more effective strategy can and do succeed in demobilizing struggle. We are accustomed to expect nothing.

So often, work in higher education is conceived as “paying your dues,” [as serving your time], as something to be endured rather than struggled against, neatly resolved by the prospects of career advancement.

But in the case of our strike, we can perceive an alternative path.

UC workers, in struggling over their conditions of work, have measurably raised the bar for what can be accepted without a fight and we should not expect scores of workers in higher-ed to easily abandon the collective power and solidarity they have discovered in the strike.

Should the rail workers, in the hopes of cutting a deal, have modified their demands for paid sick days in the face of the intransigence of the freight companies and the lukewarm conciliation of congress? The question is entirely meaningless.

With such forces arrayed against the workers, there are not many options available, but with an urgency scarcely perceived in labor struggles of recent memory, it is the workers who will make the correct decision over the course of their struggle...

and this is something no congress or law can stop. The so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ in the US and the UK is no less urgent, though the strikes that have sparked in higher education brush up against the limits of legality in different ways.

Labor law in the US is singularly repressive, but it is not only the UC's corporate lawyers that work to uphold it. But its repressive function has been internalized by the panic-stricken elements of union leadership.

Many ordinary grad workers are justifiably confused by this. Why strike at all if the deals brokered three weeks into the strike appear no different from the deals offered prior to the strike?

If this is the practice, what must be concluded is that concessions granted through the strike were concessions accepted before it began and it is the strike itself which must be conceded next.

There is an alternative conclusion, however, and one demonstrated by the workers at UC, UCU, rank and file workers in the union of Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and BRS, among others, as well as rank and file workers in the RMT in the UK:

When workers stand up for themselves collectively, and persist in doing so for as long as they deem necessary, existing labor laws and the desperate declarations of politicians are merely pieces of paper.

It is clear that the struggles in the freight industry, though springing from the grueling conditions faced by workers there, are remarkably relevant for grad workers struggling to make a living in higher-ed.

And vice-versa, as the rail workers themselves have acknowledged [over the past weeks, and here today]:

The current rail barons have refashioned the industry in the image of their 19th-century predecessors, just as UC has attempted to ‘reimagine’ the public system of higher ed as a vast sequence of private exchange run by administrators with no educational background or mandate.

While UC has used public education as an alibi for its private investments, the freight companies, lacking such formalities, have carved out a system to all but ensure the desperation of its workers as the condition for its profits.

Is this a difference in degree or a difference in kind from higher-ed, where unionized workers are pitted against each other over an ever-shrinking pool of resources, and whose contract expiration serves as a reminder that they could always lose what they already have?

One thing is clear: in whatever sector, in whatever location, the terms of workers’ struggle will be set by the workers themselves. Solidarity forever.

UCSC4COLA
@payusmoreucsc
https://linktr.ee/payusmoreucsc