Statement of Solidarity with UC Santa Cruz
Strikers
from Class Struggle
Education Workers
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| UC riot cops arrested at least 17 strike supporters last week, brutally beating, smashing heads and dragging them out of the street. (Photo: Dan Coyro/Santa Cruz Sentinel) |
We in Class Struggle Education
Workers (CSEW) send you greetings of militant solidarity. Your staunch
resistance to the austerity measures imposed by the University of California
administration is an inspiration to fellow education workers, from the UC
system and Cal State to the City University of New York. Your demand for a $1,412
cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in response to stratospheric rents speaks to
the desperate situation facing the “contingent majority” of adjuncts, grad
students, TAs and so many others who keep the universities and colleges around
the country running despite poverty pay and no job security.
We hope your inspiring struggle
will spread, not only to win this one but to spark others. It is
urgent to unchain the power of the multiracial working class to fight the oppression,
exploitation and war of this capitalist society in crisis. Victory to the UCSC Strike!
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| UC Santa Cruz strikers are demanding cost-of-living adjustment because they can't afford the stratospheric rents.(Photo: Twitter/Payusmoreucsc) |
That students have joined you
on the picket line is of great importance. As the whole history of labor
struggle underlines, “Picket lines mean: don’t cross!” Based in New York City and Southern California,
CSEW activists have emphasized this principle as we built solidarity with
strikes by teachers in Oakland, Los Angeles and Chicago last year. The
experience of strikes by “contingent” employees at NYU, Columbia, the New
School and elsewhere makes clear that to win a real victory, the entire
campus must be shut down.
Moreover, the arrest of 17
strikers and strike supporters and the violent beating of countless more underlines
the importance of the demand “Cops off campus” as an important
part of the strike action. We in Class Struggle Education Workers say: cops,
prison and security guards out of the unions now (including the UAW)!
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| On the picket line, February 18 (Photo: CSEW) |
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| CSEW on the UCSC picket line, February 18. (Photo: Instagram/payusmoreucsc) |
Faced with the violent
strikebreaking and threats of mass firing by UC president Janet Napolitano,
former top cop of the U.S. in the Obama administration, real solidarity poses
the urgent need to spread the strike throughout the whole UC system.
That means bringing out mass pickets with students joining campus workers, tenured/tenure-track
professors, and active support from key sectors of the working class beyond the
campuses. A mobilization of working-class social power can
inflict a stinging defeat on the arrogant UC bosses.
Comprising K-12 teachers, adjuncts,
grad students, social workers and other education workers, Class Struggle
Education Workers fights against racist school segregation,
privatization and union-busting charterization. We fight for free
quality public education for all, open admissions and no tuition, abolition of university
boards of regents/trustees and for student/teacher/worker control of the
schools.
The fact that your strike was
forced to be a “wildcat” walkout because the UAW tops refuse to sanction it
underscores how the labor bureaucracy undercuts the unions it sits on top of.
In New York they hide behind the no-strike Taylor Law to block struggles, in California
they cite a no-strike clause in the contract. The CSEW calls to forge a
class-struggle leadership to oust the sell-out labor bureaucracy,
to break from the bosses’ Democratic and Republican parties, and to build
a workers party to fight for a workers government.
Victory to the UCSC Strike! COLA Now! Abolish the Board of Regents – For
Student-Teacher-Workers Control of the University!
Class Struggle Education Workers
17 February 2020
17 February 2020
Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) is part of the fight for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed. See the CSEW program here.