We are the academic workers at UCSD who have faced arrest, felony charges, and expulsion for exercising our right to collective action. We’re writing to tell you that today, UC dropped all charges against us, the direct result of our collective power as academic workers.
Over the past months, UC management has resorted to unlawful retaliation in a desperate attempt to chill our union’s organizing and avoid their obligation to honor our contracts. In May, dozens of us received student misconduct charges for peacefully protesting at an alumni awards ceremony at UCSD. In June, three of us were arrested at our homes for allegedly writing on a UCSD building in chalk. UC police showed up at our labs, followed our loved ones, and searched our homes for union materials.
In response, hundreds of our co-workers have traveled across California to support us at our arraignment hearing, to picket outside Regents meetings, and to directly confront the Regents face to face. Thousands more organized campaigns at the department and campus level. Allies from UNITE HERE, AFT, and other unions turned out to rallies to defend us. Supporters in the Legislature wrote to UC urging them to drop the charges. And officers in our union took the UC to court by filing Unfair Labor Practice lawsuits.
Today, those efforts paid off, and we clearly demonstrated that these unlawful attempts to silence workers will not work now or in the future. Together, we forced UC to reverse course.
This is a victory for all of us in our fight to affirm academic workers’ right to collective action. We should all celebrate our success, and redouble our commitments to fighting the UC for fair pay and working conditions with our ever-growing power.
UNION POWER!
Abhik Pal, Mathematics
Ahmed Allibhoy, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Alexander Wenzel, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Alexia Fabiani, Biological Sciences
Allison Baker, History
Anjali Narayanan, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Beverly Naigles, Biological Sciences
Briar Conger, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Cody Ocheltree, Biological Sciences
Cody Poulsen, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Devon Northcott, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Erin Schiksnis, Biological Sciences
Euan Miles, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Gwenevere Frank, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Hiya Datta, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Helen Zhang, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Jessica Ng, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Joseph Rainaldi, Biomedical Sciences
Laura Beebe, Biological Sciences
Lucas Deyglun, Structural Engineering
Maya Gosztyla, Biomedical Sciences
Michaela Alksne, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Natalia Erazo, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Niv Anidjar, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Philipp Arndt, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Tiffany Zhou, Bioengineering
Udayan Tandon, Computer Science and Engineering