The only explanation for UAW 4811’s costly action is that it has been captured by radical left elements, more concerned with revolutionary cosplay than improving the lot of student workers. Those elements are increasingly active in the UC system. For months, Jews have been harassed, denigrated, and sometimes assaulted in our workplaces on campus. Personally, I have been followed, filmed, and waylaid by pro-Palestine activists, including on my way to and from teaching class and grading papers. Last fall, I grew so alarmed at the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas rhetoric emanating from protests on our campus’s main plaza that I moved my class to a new location. When I tried filming an encampment, a protester told me that Jews should “go back to Europe.”

Union representatives showed no concern for my well-being or for that of Jewish members in similar situations. Instead, UAW 4811, a combination of UAW 2865 and UAW 5810, has intensified its drive to impose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the entire University of California system. In the run-up to the strike, union leadership often hid details like the times and dates of key meetings about potentially adopting BDS as a goal for our next contract negotiations. Israeli members who wanted to participate in these discussions told me that they wound up excluded from the relevant fora, and at other meetings were ridiculed as they recounted tales of their family and friends being murdered or abducted on October 7.