Our union of 48,000 academic workers has just authorized a strike over the University of California’s unfair labor practices in repressing peaceful protest, retaliating against members for protesting, and prohibiting pro-Palestine speech at the worksite.
United Auto Workers Local 4811 announced the results yesterday: with nearly 20,000 members voting, 79 percent voted yes.
Part of the groundwork behind this vote and informing the potential strike is the organizing we have done over the past several months in our science departments—as researchers who are no longer willing to support genocide with our labor.
As unionized workers in higher education, we are positioned to intervene at the very beginning of the military supply chain. The Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions issued an urgent call on October 16 to stop arming Israel—including the specific request to disrupt military funding and military research.
In 2021 alone, the Department of Defense spent $7.4 billion on research within U.S. universities. The U.S. military vies to be a world leader in science and technology—especially machine learning and A.I., quantum computing, robotics, and weapons development.
Researchers with expertise in cutting-edge fields tend to seek careers at universities and national labs, where exploratory research is facilitated more readily than in the private sector. Expert labor is also far cheaper within academia—and graduate workers can be poached into military jobs after graduation. The military is therefore incentivized to farm the expertise and talent it needs within universities.
Source: How UC Researchers Began Saying No to Military Work | Labor Notes

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