Hundreds of United Auto Workers Local 4811 union members and supporters gathered in front of Geisel Library at 12 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8, as part of a National Day of Action against federal cuts to university budgets and scientific research. This Day of Action, called “Kill the Cuts,” included rallies at every UC campus as well as over 30 other university campuses nationwide.
Federal budget cuts to public universities across the nation and the state of California’s proposed cuts of over $396 million to the UC system have put UC staff, faculty, and students on alert. UAW 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers in the UC system, warns that these cuts will have devastating effects on research, healthcare, and education. On March 19, UC President Michael Drake announced a hiring freeze, which many UAW protestors pointed to as just the first effect of these budget cuts.
UC San Diego is more vulnerable than most to the National Institutes of Health cuts. As a research institution, UCSD receives the 12th most funding out of the 2,500 that receive funding from the NIH. The University is expected to lose $150 million in research funding from the NIH which has already led to UCSD no longer guaranteeing funding for new graduate students.
The rally was emceed by teaching assistant and UAW 4811 recording secretary Sutanay Bhattacharya. After another UAW 4811 organizer led rally participants in chants like “Whose research? Our research!,” Bhattacharya addressed the crowd.
“UC is facing about a billion dollars in funding cuts,” he said. “This is all just the start of a coordinated attack on education and research and science in general. The time to act, to speak up, and do something about this is right now.”
Attendees carried a variety of signs with slogans, including “Science 4 Everyone Not Just Billionaires!” and “KILL THE CUTS, SAVE LIVES.”
Josh Navarro, a student academic specialist at the Teaching and Learning Commons, announced that Student Services and Advising Professionals across the UC are forming a new union to represent their interests. The union filed for recognition in November 2024 and had already begun the process of organizing before the budget cuts.
“When UC has faced budget cuts, non-union staff are one of the first to be impacted. … This is one of the reasons that SSAPs at UC are forming a union — to have a say in our working conditions when things like this happen,” Navarro said.
Navarro spoke on the particular difficulties currently faced by UCSD student workers and faculty.
“Budget cuts have reached every hub in our department: our hours of services for students have been reduced, our professional development funding for staff has been frozen,” Navarro said. “And perhaps most devastating: Our undergraduate writing consultants have gone from working 10 hours per week last quarter to an average of three hours per week this Spring.”
One of the rally’s final speakers, Anna Skrip, a Ph.D. student studying biochemistry and molecular biophysics, called on attendees to take action.
“It’s easy to feel like we are up against powers too big, but the history of overcoming injustice tells a different story,” she said. “Turning the tide takes collective action, and when I see all of you standing shoulder to shoulder here, it makes me feel more hope than I could possibly feel right now.
Skrip also emphasized the need for mobilization:
“The stakes are much too high to idly watch corruption sink its teeth further and further into this institution. … Workers have the most at stake, and these cuts threaten our security.”
