Student-Worker Strike Repercussions - Part 22 (complaint)

State board issues labor complaint against UC San Diego. Here are the charges 

SHAANTH NANGUNERI, 8-17-23 State Worker of Sacramento Bee

California’s leading state labor agency has found merit to reports of retaliation in the form of arrests and student misconduct charges at the University of California, San Diego. The dispute stems from the fallout of last year’s largest strike in higher education history. A coalition of tens of thousands of academic employees, such as student researchers and teaching assistants represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW), walked out of UC classrooms to demand better working conditions, improved wages, and improved grievance measures. It went on for six weeks and ended in December. Though the unions didn’t get everything they wished for, they won historic salary increases and greater protections for academic employees in the workplace. Following the strike, graduate students on several UC campuses protested reports that enrollment would be cut to make up the wage increases. Some strikers said their pay was also docked. 

At UC San Diego, union members continued to seek better working conditions amid the contract’s implementation, protesting and disrupting a university alumni awards celebration in May. After the protest, the university tried to sanction some of the student protesters with charges of misconduct. University officials stated in a letter that the protesters “physically bumped Chancellor (Pradeep) Khosla and took the microphone away from him.” Union leaders dispute this statement. They said protesters were peaceful and exercising their rights and the complaint, filed Tuesday in the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), affirms their point. 

“This vindicates what academic workers have been saying for months: that UC’s actions are unlawful retaliation,” stated Adu Vengal, UAW 2865’s recording secretary and a worker in UC San Diego’s Department of Mathematics. The union brought the unfair labor practice charges to the board. Now, “We hope that PERB’s decision will bring UC management to their senses and that they’ll provide what they agreed to when they signed our contracts: raises, appointment security provisions, and interim protections for survivors of abuse and discrimination.”

According to the complaint, UC management also “took further adverse action” against three union members by arresting two graduate student workers and one postdoctoral scholar for felony vandalism and conspiracy to commit a crime. The union leaders said that arrests were in response to students writing in chalk “Living Wage Now” on concrete next to a campus building. When the campus police executed a search warrant against a union member for the chalking, the complaint states that authorities were searching for evidence of union affiliation. Other charges generally revolve around the same issue at UC San Diego, but deal with unlawful consultation and bypassing union representatives during disciplinary action. The university has 20 days to respond. 

UC spokesperson Ryan King declined to comment on details outlined in the complaint but noted that its allegations are preliminary and deserve further review. The UC has received several unfair labor practice allegations during the strike, but many of those were waived with the new contracts. “The University of California values its employees and is committed to working through PERB’s process in good faith to resolve the parties’ pending dispute,” King wrote in an email. This month’s complaint will go through mediation in an settlement conference, wrote Felix De La Torre, a spokesperson for the PERB board, in an email. If that doesn’t produce an agreement, an adjudicative law judge will review presented evidence and issue a proposed decision. If UAW prevails, that decision could include backpay and attorney’s fees. The unions could also get the university’s misconduct charges dropped.

Source: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article278319203.html.

NOTE: There are many steps between a "complaint" and a PERB "decision." A complaint means that after an initial investigation, there was sufficient evidence found to make the charge. The case has yet to be heard by an administrative law judge. And the judge's decision can be appealed to the PERB.