The Unit­ed Auto Work­ers (UAW) Local 2865, which rep­re­sents 12,000 UC aca­d­e­m­ic stu­dent employ­ees , announced last month that it would stage a two-day strike on April 2 and 3 over alle­ga­tions of unfair labor prac­tices (ULP) by the uni­ver­si­ty. After grad­u­ate assis­tants at UCSC and two oth­er cam­pus­es walked off the job yes­ter­day morn­ing, five strik­ers and 15 under­grad­u­ate sup­port­ers were arrest­ed as they pick­et­ed at the UCSC cam­pus’ west entrance, accord­ing to the union. A union spokesper­son said that two addi­tion­al arrests of under­grad­u­ates had occurred today, in a sit­u­a­tion that was still devel­op­ing as Work­ing In These Times went to press.

As Work­ing In These Times has report­ed pre­vi­ous­ly , grad­u­ate assis­tants are one of sev­er­al groups of work­ers who have been locked in inten­si­fy­ing labor bat­tles with the UC sys­tem, which has been hit hard by near­ly $1 bil­lion in bud­get cuts dur­ing the past five years. In Novem­ber, grad­u­ate stu­dent work­ers struck in sol­i­dar­i­ty with cam­pus ser­vice work­ers, a rare labor action that is pro­hib­it­ed by most union con­tracts and that was enabled only by the expi­ra­tion of the UAW’s con­tract ear­li­er that month. The union says that since then, the uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem has engaged in a ​“pat­tern of intim­i­da­tion” against mem­bers who par­tic­i­pate in labor actions on UC cam­pus­es, threat­en­ing that strik­ing could result in loss of jobs and even, for for­eign stu­dents, loss of visas.

A sys­tem-wide strike by grad­u­ate assis­tants at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia com­menced yes­ter­day with what their union calls an ugly irony. The work stop­page, staged in protest of past alleged attempts by UC to intim­i­date grad­u­ate work­ers for labor orga­niz­ing, was quick­ly met with what work­ers say was a fur­ther attempt at intim­i­da­tion: The arrest of 20 stu­dents at UC San­ta Cruz who were pick­et­ing ear­ly Wednes­day morning.

Josh Brahin­sky, a sev­enth-year UCSC doc­tor­al stu­dent and union offi­cer who was the first per­son arrest­ed Wednes­day, spoke with Work­ing In These Times fol­low­ing his release. ​“This is a pre­med­i­tat­ed attack on work­ers for legal pick­et­ing, and it’s very much in line with the unfair labor prac­tices that the strike was all about,” he said. Pick­et­ing by employ­ees dur­ing strikes and a num­ber of oth­er cir­cum­stances is pro­tect­ed in most instances by the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Act.

Spokes­peo­ple for the uni­ver­si­ty have said that the stu­dents were arrest­ed as they attempt­ed to block auto entrances to cam­pus. Dur­ing sev­er­al pre­vi­ous demon­stra­tions at UCSC — includ­ing stu­dent protests against tuition hikes in 2012, as well as a strike by UC patient care and ser­vice work­ers in 2013 — demon­stra­tors have effec­tive­ly shut down UCSC’s cam­pus by block­ing off entrances, lead­ing uni­ver­si­ty offi­cials to close most cam­pus build­ings. But Brahin­sky denies that he was block­ing traf­fic at the time of his arrest yes­ter­day, say­ing that cars were pass­ing pick­eters and ​“there was no ques­tion as to whether peo­ple had access to cam­pus.” A video shot by a union sup­port­er shows Brahin­sky attempt­ing to tra­verse a cross­walk, telling police, ​“I’m a union leader, and I’m try­ing to pick­et,” before being arrested.

He and oth­er union mem­bers allege instead that the response of cam­pus police was a cal­cu­lat­ed one intend­ed to intim­i­date strik­ers and their sup­port­ers. They claim that a line of police in riot gear, as well as a police van used to trans­port arrestees, were already present and wait­ing as stu­dents began pick­et­ing. Accord­ing to the union, the arrestees were var­i­ous­ly cit­ed with such alle­ga­tions as fail­ing to dis­perse, being a pedes­tri­an in a road­way and remain­ing at the scene of a riot. As of Wednes­day evening, all 20 indi­vid­u­als had been released.

(Spokes­peo­ple for UCSC had not respond­ed to calls or e‑mails request­ing com­ment by the time Work­ing In These Times went to press).

This month’s ULP strike was called in response to an inci­dent in Feb­ru­ary, when a group of grad­u­ate stu­dent instruc­tors at UCSC say they were told by the direc­tor of the university’s writ­ing pro­gram, ​“If you strike, you will not work in this pro­gram again” in response to a poten­tial strike over griev­ances. The UAW alleges that UC has attempt­ed to intim­i­date or retal­i­ate against union mem­bers engag­ing in legal­ly pro­tect­ed activ­i­ties in sev­er­al oth­er instances. Dur­ing the Novem­ber strike, man­age­ment at UCLA alleged­ly told inter­na­tion­al grad­u­ate stu­dents that strik­ing could result in the loss of their work visas, and the vice chan­cel­lor of UC Berke­ley told deans that the strike was ​“ille­gal” and asked them to tell work­ers that ​“they must meet their sched­uled teach­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties.” The UAW has filed unfair labor prac­tices com­plaints over this and oth­er inci­dents with the Pub­lic Employ­ment Rela­tions Board and is await­ing a ruling.

Mean­while, the grad­u­ate stu­dent work­ers’ union is locked in a tus­sle with UC over its con­tract, which expired in Novem­ber. The union says that the uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem has refused to bar­gain over the issue of class size, which grad­u­ate stu­dent work­ers would like to see reduced, and has also filed a ULP on this count. A report released by the union last fall con­tends that while UC admin­is­tra­tors have ratio­nal­ized dwin­dling finan­cial sup­port for grad­u­ate stu­dents and soar­ing class sizes as cost-cut­ting mea­sures, the uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem’s stra­ta of upper-lev­el admin­is­tra­tors has swelled, and the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als earn­ing more than $200,000 per year in base pay increased by 44 per­cent between 2008 and 2011. Mean­while, accord­ing to the union, grad­u­ate stu­dents at UC typ­i­cal­ly make between $17,000-$18,000 annu­al­ly for their work as part-time instructors.

Giv­en their low pay, many grad­u­ate instruc­tors believe they have com­mon cause with cam­pus ser­vice work­ers, and last fall’s sym­pa­thy strike was hailed by UC unions as a ​“his­toric moment for cam­pus sol­i­dar­i­ty.” Since then, oth­er cam­pus unions have made some gains in their own con­tract fights. Though cam­pus unions say they were exclud­ed from the deci­sion lead­ing to the appoint­ment of new UC Pres­i­dent Janet Napoli­tano last year — and many stu­dents and work­ers protest­ed her appoint­ment giv­en her for­mer role as the sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty — they also hoped that she would ​“restore the spir­it of coop­er­a­tion and respect” to labor rela­tions in the UC system.

In March, 13,000 UC hos­pi­tal tech­ni­cal work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by AFSCME 3299 secured a new con­tract after issu­ing a strike threat. The month before, cus­to­di­ans, gar­den­ers and food ser­vice work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by AFSCME also won their con­tract fight. The L.A. Times report­ed, ​“the two set­tle­ments with AFSCME rep­re­sents a big step in UC Pres­i­dent Janet Napolitano’s goal of bring­ing an era of labor peace to the uni­ver­si­ty; sev­en oth­er unions, includ­ing nurs­es, pre­vi­ous­ly set­tled con­tracts with UC since Napoli­tano became pres­i­dent six months ago.”

Giv­en this week’s arrests, how­ev­er, UC grad­u­ate stu­dents are skep­ti­cal over whether such an era is tru­ly dawn­ing. The response from police and admin­is­tra­tors ​“doesn’t look like how you get labor peace at the UC,” says Bri­an Mal­one, a UCSC Ph.D. can­di­date in lit­er­a­ture and spokesper­son for the union.

Nev­er­the­less, he says that grad­u­ate stu­dents at all nine UC cam­pus­es are gear­ing up for the sec­ond day of the strike. Giv­en the arrests, he hopes that fac­ul­ty and oth­er cam­pus allies will also mobi­lize in sup­port of grad­u­ate stu­dent work­ers’ cause: ​“Here we are on a strike that’s about a pat­tern of work­er intim­i­da­tion, and [the admin­is­tra­tion] decid­ed to con­tin­ue and esca­late that pattern.”