UC San Diego students have been involved in the labor movement since the school’s inception, from organizing in labor unions to showing out for solidarity protests. With the establishment of the UCSD Labor Center, the student organization SPARk, and the return of the summer Student Labor Organizing Conference these past two years, labor organizing efforts at UCSD are at an unprecedented height. Student workers, union interns, and Labor Center organizers are screaming to make their voices heard.

Last week, The UCSD Guardian interviewed students working for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and the Labor Center to better understand how the UCSD community is supporting the movement.

Francis Galang, a third-year Ph.D. student and UCSD Labor Center program coordinator, said the labor movement at UCSD reflects the larger resurgence in organizing across the country.

“Following this massive upward redistribution of wealth in 2020, the labor movement has faced a resurgence across so many different places,” Galang said. “There’s so much more organizing that is possible because people are tired of the precarity that was there throughout the 2010s.”

Galang points to the trend of the labor centers around the University of California, including at UCSD. Established in March 2023, the UCSD Labor Center is supporting this resurgence of student labor organizing on UCSD’s campus. This center, alongside the other eight across the UC, is dedicated to supporting interested students by hosting educational programming and connecting them with opportunities like local conferences and internships.

To learn more about the Labor Center and its affiliate movements, The Guardian sat down with 2025 alumna Christina Marie Green, who became involved in education efforts as an organizing intern for the AFSCME union in her fifth year. As an intern, she partnered with the Labor Center to host employment workshops, reflecting on the experiences as some of her most meaningful work on campus.

One employment workshop that she led was dedicated to helping students identify exploitation, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace.

“That’s a workshop that we noticed a lot of students were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a student worker, and these are things that we’re experiencing right now,’” Green said. “When you have a workforce that is not informed or educated on certain topics, it leads to, unfortunately, abuse of power. We are trying to regulate that sense of unknowing.”

To Galang, the recent resurgence in student labor organizing is unique because students have begun to collaborate with peers on other college campuses more than ever before.

“I’m very excited about the fact that students are working across campuses,” Galang said. “Not just between UC campuses, not just between organizations that exist on multiple campuses, but across campuses at large. … I’m excited that people are willing to organize at levels we haven’t seen since maybe the ‘60s.”

This cross-campus collaboration is exemplified by the return of the Student Labor Organizing Conference. This past August, AFSCME organizing interns like third-year UCSD student Liah Morales helped revive the Student Labor Organizing Conference, which had been dormant since around 2019. Through panels and workshops about the nuances of organized labor, the conference brought together students across the UC and educated them about the labor movement.

“It was so rewarding getting to see so many students from all of the different campuses that were passionate about the same issues that I was passionate about,” Morales said. “Just getting to meet more like-minded students was really motivating, I think, and I got to meet so many cool organizers as well.”

Morales is also a member of SPARk, formerly known as the Radical Planning Collective, a student organization established in Fall 2025 to teach UCSD students about collective action. Inspired by the work of organizations like UCLA’s Student Labor Advocacy Project, SPARk strives to be a source of political education and union activism through regular teach-ins and this year’s student-run “dis-orientation tours” of campus. Morales shared that SPARk plans to host similar large-scale events in the upcoming year, including an anti-imperialism teach-in series.

According to Morales and Galang, the University’s suppression of students’ free speech has stifled organizing efforts on campus over the past two years. This has proven to be one of the biggest roadblocks for student organizers.

Galang spoke on the impact that the 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment and its subsequent police raid had on the UCSD community.

“People had a vision of a university that was willing to protect speech, willing to protect action, willing to protect assembly — and that is very quickly being eroded,” Galang said. In addition to strengthened “Time, Place, Manner” policies, he says the University’s willingness to suppress student voices has left a lasting air of unease for future labor organizing efforts on campus.

Morales shared that although labor organizing is a lot of work to tackle alongside classes, it has proven to be one of the most life-changing experiences of her college career.

“It has definitely made college much more of a rewarding experience,” she said. “It’s no longer just about getting a degree and graduating, you know? I want to build longevity in the projects and campaigns that I’m currently in, and that’s invested me to really stay around even after I graduate. That’s probably one of the biggest shifts — this isn’t just school to me anymore.”

Morales added that one of her biggest pieces of advice for students interested in labor organizing is to bring a friend and to discover the joy in collective action. Whether they stay for a full day or only 30 minutes, out on the picket line, students and community members dance, sing, chant, share food and music, and engage in lively conversation. Galang, Green, and Morales all agree that labor organizing, while being a life-saving necessity for many workers, also serves to break down barriers and build strong relationships between UCSD students and its less visible surrounding community of workers that keep the University running.

“As my director says at the Labor Center, organizing is baptism through fire,” Galang laughed. “You get thrown into it. The work of it is very dynamic; the work of it is very unpredictable. But the work of it is so rewarding because you are literally changing the world. You’re changing what the conditions look like for communities throughout San Diego.”