Dear colleagues,
We are writing to invite you to sign a letter drafted by a coalition of UC Faculty Against Union Busting to protest UC’s official communications to its employees, which present the recent UAW ULP strike as “illegal” or “unlawful” and threaten repercussions against those who participated in it.
From the start of the strike, the University Administration assumed it was illegal, despite UC having no power to adjudicate the strike’s legality and substantial legal precedent suggesting otherwise. The University twice sought an injunction to halt the strike from the state agency with this power — the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) — and was twice denied. Contrary to relevant CA precedent and statutes, on June 5, UC went forum shopping and found an Orange County Court that issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the UAW. Egregiously, in the counseling memos and warning letters sent to UAW members, the UC has repeatedly claimed that “the strike was unlawful” before the matter was heard in court. The TRO is in no way a ruling on the legality of the strike, and for UC to claim otherwise and to invoke the TRO as a basis for more punitive discipline against some UAW members is not just false but also irresponsible, in bad faith, and evidence of a persistent union-busting attitude.
Sign the letter HERE by August 10th.
UCSBFA Board