Thomas Murphy
On Wednesday, Oct. 22, roughly 300 Teamsters Local 2010 union members marched across campus to highlight the importance of funding higher education and education workers. Chanting “When we fight, we win” and “Teamsters strong,” the protesters rally responds to recent attacks from the Trump administration on higher education institutions.
The rally was in response to the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” earlier this month and its threat of a $1.2 billion settlement against UCLA last month. This comes amid continued federal funding cuts to the University of California that have threatened the university system’s operations.
Teamsters 2010 is a statewide union that represents about 24,000 public education workers, including roughly 15,000 UC staff. The intended goal of the rally was to “demand UCSD stop the layoffs and reinstate the workers who’ve already been let go” and to seek “fair contracts for UCSD workers.”
Teamsters 2010, who represents San Diego-area university workers, organized the rally. Two out-of-state Teamster representatives spoke at the rally as well, denouncing the UC administration’s attacks against the union during negotiations.
In a speech, Teamsters 2010 Secretary-Treasurer Jason Rabinowitz said that if the Trump administration succeeds in its lawsuit against UCLA, UC workers would be the first to feel the impacts, stating it would be “an attack on our jobs.”
The UCSD Guardian interviewed Peter Finn, Western Region vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. For him, participating in the rally was a way to “make sure that everyone knows how important public education is and the folks that make these campuses run.”
Finn mentioned that the potential fallout from the Trump administration’s proposed $1.2 billion settlement against UCLA would further jeopardize workers’ livelihoods and students’ educational resources across the UC system.
As of July 2025, over 100 UC San Diego campus employees were laid off, according to Melinda Battenberg, UCSD’s associate director of internal communications. This follows UCSD instituting a campuswide hiring pause in February to prepare for significant budget cuts.
Groups of Teamsters arrived on campus in charter buses, which they parked in front of the Gilman Drive and Mandeville Lane bus stop. One Teamster bus driver said this was done to bring attention to the importance of their work on-campus by forcing students to go to the next stop.
A construction truck of unknown origin also blocked the Gilman Drive and Meyers Drive bus stop during the rally.
This rally follows a Sept. 16 lawsuit filed by Teamsters 2010 and 20 other UC labor groups against the Trump administration. The lawsuit claimed “the illegal and coercive use of frivolous lawsuits to attack the University of California system and threaten the jobs and rights of Teamsters members and other UC workers and students.”