With Finals Week Underway, UC Strikers Get Disruptive
Student Workers at UCSB Use Picket Line to Block Staff from Parking
It’s finals week for University of California students, and striking academic workers are ramping up disruptions statewide. As the strike enters week four, student workers at UC Santa Barbara are using the picket line to block staff from parking on campus, alongside holding sit-ins, chalking up sidewalks, and hanging large banners around campus to make their presence felt.
Joe Costello is a striking graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at UCSB and an organizer for SRU-UAW, a local union affiliate that represents UC student researchers. He said the workers’ actions are the result of the UC being uncompromising at the bargaining table.
“The UC has been offering things that really do not address the material demands that me and everybody else really need, and we wanted to demonstrate that not only is our labor important, but we can disrupt the workers at the UC in other ways,” Costello said on Tuesday. “So, what we did is walk back and forth across crosswalks, which is totally legal, we’re just using the crosswalk a lot. If that meant that people couldn’t park, then they couldn’t park.”
