LOS ANGELES, May 31 (Xinhua) -- The ongoing strike at the University of California (UC) keeps expanding over the university's controversial response to pro-Palestinian protests, as three more campuses will join the walkout next week.
Academic workers at UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego will walk off the job starting Monday, and employees at UC Irvine will join them on Wednesday, the workers' union United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811 announced on social media Friday.
Academic workers at UC Santa Cruz, the first UC campus to stand up and withhold their labor, have been on strike since May 20. Early Friday morning, police entered the campus and forcibly removed the encampment and barricades blocking the main entrance.
Dozens of police in riot gear were seen surrounding arm-in-arm protesters and pushing them from encampment to sidewalks, and demonstrators were heard screaming and chanting messages, according to video from local news stations.
Approximately 80 protesters were reported arrested on Friday at UC Santa Cruz.
As the strike at UC Davis and UC Los Angeles entered the fourth day, the workers at UC Irvine held an "Amnesty for All Rally" on the campus Friday afternoon in support of their colleagues, according to their union.
UAW 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers at the ten campuses of the UC system and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, voted on May 15 to call for a strike to protest the UC's treatment of the pro-Palestinian protesters and demand amnesty for those facing disciplines.
The strike will expand to six of the UC's ten campuses next week, when 16,000 more academic workers join the 15,000 workers already on strike, the union told media outlets.
The strikes are taking place at a critical time of the school year, just about two weeks before students begin to take their end-of-quarter finals.
"UAW's goal to 'maximize chaos and confusion' has come to fruition, creating substantial and irreparable impacts on campuses and impacting our students at a crucial time of their education," said the UC Office of the President in a statement on Friday.
The escalation of labor tensions comes as the union and the UC are battling before the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) over the legality of the strike.
"When faced with Palestine Solidarity encampments and other nonviolent protests by academic workers, students, and community members, UC has mishandled and escalated the situation by taking unlawful actions that cut to the heart of our collective bargaining agreements," the union explained why it authorized a strike on its website, noting that it has filed "unfair labor practice charges in response."
The UC Office of the President has countered by filing its own unfair labor charge against the union. The office called the strike "unlawful" and contended that the strike violated the no-strike clause of their contracts with the UC over non-labor issues.
The UC also filed a request with the PERB on May 21 for injunctive relief with UAW 4811's charges, but the state agency declined the request for lack of evidence.
The university on Wednesday filed another request for the PERB to order the union to halt its strike, arguing that union members have disrupted classes and access to campuses. The strikes, it said, were "to the detriment of tens of thousands of students, faculty and other campus community members."
The two sides are awaiting a ruling on the issue.
On May 2, after a night of violent clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters on UC Los Angeles campus, more than 200 protesters were arrested as police moved to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment at the university.
Police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests at UC San Diego and UC Irvine also led to dozens of arrests in May, as pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been spreading at colleges and universities across the United States amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. ■