UC faculty system-wide are holding a solidarity rally in support of the UAW strikers at 12 noon on Monday, November 21. The UCLA location is the Inverted Fountain, near Pritzker Hall and the Ostin Music Center. See you there and please bring your friends and colleagues!
We met at Bunche at 12:30pm and then walked together with the strikers to the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood, where we all stood in the intersection and held a brief rally before walking back to campus.
Some of us started at 12pm at the picket near the Gonda Building, and then at 12:30pm we all met at Bunche as usual. At 3pm, we went to the rally at the Inverted Fountain.
Faculty, staff, and friends from all parts of campus meet each day at 12:30pm in front of Bunche Hall at UCLA to support the strike. Please join us and look for our banner! Many graduate students have told us how much they appreciate our daily presence.
A great resource for faculty, especially on the crucial importance of not picking up struck labor (work that Academic Student Employees normally do) is this linktree prepared by the Bunche picket’s Faculty Outreach Committee.
Learn about the union demands at fairucnow.org. You can also donate food and supplies to strikers here at UCLA and donate money to the strike and hardship fund. To join our email group, please fill out this very short google form and Michael Chwe will add you manually and get back to you (or you can email him at michael@chwe.net).
We started at Bunche and traveled to pickets at the Inverted Fountain and the Court of Sciences.
Noah Zatz, Professor of Law at UCLA. The tweet version of this post is here and Noah is also working on a longer version with colleagues.
I’m flabbergasted that the systemwide (not UCLA) UC Senate leadership has issued guidance on the strike that undermines its own Senate faculty members (like me) and undermines solidarity with the UAW strikers, our co-workers and students. It does so by parroting weak administration talking points that would sharply limit Senate members’ rights to respect the UAW picket line, while also failing to acknowledge, let alone advance, contrary points that protect faculty. There are multiple problems with the letter, but I highlight one here: statements about the Faculty Code of Conduct (APM-015).
The guidance letter turns to the Code of Conduct after offering an already cramped account of Senate faculty’s rights to respect the picket line under the state Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) (more on that another time, but for now, compare this FAQ). It then seems to take back even this grudging acknowledgment by claiming that that “Notwithstanding the right to respect the picket line, Senate faculty have certain obligations as [UC] employees,” referring to our instructional duties, especially with regard to grading. This “notwithstanding” is nonsense because our statutory HEERA rights cannot be trumped by an internal UC document. The APM is not higher law! The whole point of respecting a picket line is to withhold work that the employer ordinarily requires.
Furthermore, the letter omits a crucial detail within the Code of Conduct itself. The critical provision [II.A.1.(c)] refers to not carrying out instructional duties “without legitimate reason.” What reason could be more legitimate than exercising a statutorily protected right?
We gathered near Bunche at 12:30pm as usual, and around 2pm walked with the banner to the picket at the Inverted Fountain, the picket in front of the Broad Art Center (where we were greeted with cheers!), and the rally in Dickson Plaza.
Great faculty turnout for the first day of the strike! Many departments were represented, including Asian American Studies, Chicana/o Studies, School of Education and Information Studies, Gender Studies, History, Law, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology.
At 3pm we carried the banner to Bruin Plaza where all the pickets converged for a rally.
