By HERMAN MORRIS
The war in Gaza and U.S. support for it marks the largest arena of social protest in the United States today. Unfortunately, other than statements and occasional public demonstrations, the labor movement leadership has largely avoided active participation in this movement. Actual mobilizations that have involved forces in labor have either come from rank-and-file caucuses or from the student movement, which exploded in the spring of 2024 with the encampment tactic.
United Auto Workers Local 4811 has been a standout exception to this rule, largely because it occupies such a unique position in the labor force, being comprised of 48,000 members all of whom are University of California system graduate student workers—teaching assistants, tutors, and researchers. Its membership has been involved in the student encampments since they began, particularly at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz.
When Zionist counter-protesters attacked the students (which included UAW members) at UCLA at the beginning of May, police and UCLA security did not step in for over three hours, beating and arresting Palestinian solidarity protesters in the process. In the wake of this attack, Local 4811 called a rolling strike throughout the UC system on grounds of “unfair labor practices.” Demands were for amnesty for all students involved in the encampments; UC to reaffirm rights to free speech on campus; divestment from UC’s known investments in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza; disclosure of all funding sources and investments; and the ability for researchers to opt out of any military-funded projects or projects otherwise related to the oppression of Palestinians.
In response to this strike, the UC system filed two separate unlawful strike claims to the Public Employee Relations Board, and both were struck down. After this failed, the UC system went around the board to an Orange County judge and got him to place a temporary restraining order on the union until June 27, effectively breaking the strike.
What is clear in this response is that the UAW workers at UC took up a historic and important fight in the Palestine solidarity movement and took a step outside of economic trade-union struggle and into the wider political class struggle on international lines. Doing so, however, put them in direct conflict with the state. As in many other cases in which the bourgeois state is confronted in the class struggle, all previous notions of “impartiality” and mediation between the ruling class and the working class were thrown out, and the strike was halted so that U.S. support for Israel’s military effort could continue uninterrupted.
This assault on Local 4811 is happening in tandem with a renewed investigation into the UAW by a federal monitor—an ostensibly “impartial” watchdog appointed by a court in 2021 to look into alleged corruption in the union. The monitor personally called UAW President Shawn Fain and asked him to back off the ceasefire resolution passed by the national union, but the union’s democratically elected leadership held fast on the call for a ceasefire. Six days later, the monitor moved to extend the investigation to Fain on grounds that he had obstructed the process of releasing evidence to the monitor and had retaliated against a union vice president. Secretary Treasurer Margaret Mock is also under investigation on related charges.
Although the ceasefire demand falls short by placing equal demands on both the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships in a war of national liberation, this investigation is still an attempt by the ruling class to tamp down on any development of class independence from the political line of the big capitalist parties in the United States.
These attacks demonstrate the limitations of pursuing labor action through purely legalist manuevers. While UAW is challenging the injunction in court (and is right to so), one thing must be completely clear: Driving the strike out of the street and into the U.S. court system is a trick; it is meant to mire the union into a confusing legal maze designed for the ruling class with a million different tricks to further delay, demoralize, and isolate the strike.
Successful strikes require broad and deep union involvement. Unfortunately, Local 4811 only had ~32% of its total membership vote in favor of the strike. Moreover, its pursuit of the “stand-up strike” model, in which campuses were called out to strike one by one, meant that only a partial amount of the union membership was mobilized at the time that the injunction came down. What they could still do, though, is to call informational pickets and rallies throughout the UC system, informing their membership and the larger labor movement of this historic attack on their fundamental labor rights. In that way, they could begin to build the capacity to challenge the state in a place that workers can win—the streets.
Remove the UAW federal monitor! For union self-governance! An injury to one is an injury to all!
Photo: Paul Bersebach / Orange Country Register