https://iclfi.org/pubs/slus/2025-ucstrike
AFSCME 3299 is going on a 2-day strike on 11/17-18 to fight the UC Regents’ assault on their wages and healthcare benefits. They will be joined on the picket lines by nurses in the CNA, whose contract expired on 10/31. We call on all unions, students, and faculty to respect the picket line and shut down the campus. This means not going to class, not using campus facilities, and joining the pickets to send a message to UC that the strikers have wide support.
UC workers and students are under attack from all sides. Last year Newsom’s Regents were already gunning for the hard-won gains of the workers and doing everything they could to slow or reverse the unionization of campus; Biden had already unleashed a wave of police terror against pro-Palestine activists, sending a chilling message to campus radicals. Then Trump came in and launched a frontal assault on academia, putting the workers and students in a much harder position and fomenting every kind of division he can: pitting native born against foreign, cis women against trans people, white and Asian against black. UC joined forces with Trump, handing over the names of hundreds of pro-Palestine students, faculty and staff and using the fear of Trump to strengthen their hand against the workers. Meanwhile, students are stuck paying massive tuition and going into debt, all to enter a job market that is being ravaged by tariffs, AI, national debt, and the bi-partisan drive towards war with China.
It’s hard for students to skip class when each quarter costs thousands of dollars. But if they want to change anything important in society—be it tuition costs, job prospects, genocide, or the cost of living—they need to ally with the working class who has the power to shut down production and cause the bosses some real pain. Non-union workers are without protection, and it takes real guts to stand up for a union when you don’t yet have one yourself.
The pressure is strong for everyone to look out for their own group, their own craft, their own ethnicity, and not to “stick your neck out” for others. But this will only leave us all more vulnerable. The best defense is to stand firm together!
The campus unions are being slapped around because they are not standing together. UPTE-CWA 9119 was supposed to strike with AFSCME on 11/17-18. Then on 11/8 their bargaining team accepted a tentative agreement and called off the strike before their own members could vote on it! This not only throws AFSCME under the bus, it puts UPTE-CWA in a much worse bargaining position and will come back to haunt them the next time they are in need of some class solidarity. The UAW-4811 leadership has issued empty words of “support” for AFSCME, but has not organized their members to honor the picket lines. Meanwhile, AFSCME leadership’s strategy of staying on the job without a contract and waging repeated mini-strikes is worse than useless—it’s demoralizing the members and dulling the most important weapon the union has—the strike. This is the fifth limited strike in the past 18 months! What has this yielded? Nothing. And all three union leaderships continue to give political support to the Democratic Party, even as its politicians continue to screw them. Enough!There are 3 possible roads ahead 1) Give in and let Trump and the Regents have their way. 2) Continue to fight with the same strategy and continue to get steamrolled. 3) Break out of this losing strategy and unite the campus unions, the non-union workers, and the student radicals in a common struggle to defend ourselves.
We of the Spartacus Youth Clubs and the Spartacist League are fighting for Option 3. The first step to turn this around is to unite those who want to fight for a different strategy around actions that will build our collective strength. Right now that means building a solid strike for AFSCME 3299.
- Picket lines mean don’t cross – shut down the campus!
- For student and worker solidarity!
- No reprisals against students or workers who honor the picket lines!
