SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A rolling strike by unionized academic workers upset about the University of California’s response to pro-Palestinian protests at various campuses will spread to three more campuses next week, including UC San Diego, union officials said Friday.
According to United Auto Workers Local 4811, workers will hit the picket lines Monday morning at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, with UC Irvine workers joining the lines Wednesday.
The wave of strikes began at UC Santa Cruz, then spread this week to UCLA and UC Davis.
According to the union, UAW represents 8,000 at UC San Diego and 5,000 workers at UC Irvine along with 3,000 at UC Santa Barbara. The union has a total of 31,500 members at all six of the universities now targeted by the strikes.
Advertisement
“For the last month, UC has used and condoned violence against workers and students peacefully protesting on campus for peace and freedom in Palestine,” Rafael Jaime, president of UAW Local 4811, said in a statement. “Rather than put their energies into resolution, UC is attempting to halt the strike through legal procedures. They have not been successful, and this strike will roll on. We are united in our demand that UC address these serious ULPs, beginning with dropping all criminal and conduct charges that have been thrown at our members because they spoke out against injustice.”
UAW Local 4811 is asking the UC schools to give amnesty to all academic employees and students who faced arrest or disciplinary actions for protesting at campuses. The union also wants the students to have guarantees of freedom of speech and political expression on campus and is asking for researchers to be able to opt out of funding sources tied to the Israeli Defense Force.
Students at UCSD established a “Gaza Solidarity” encampment on the campus’ Library Walk on May 1.
Dani Miskell, Reporter
Day Two at UCSD’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment
The UCSDivest Coalition, organizers of the encampment campaign, called on UCSD to “end their silence and publicly condemn the destruction of over 80% of schools and all 12 universities in Gaza in a systematic dismantling of infrastructure that UN experts have termed scholasticide,” a statement from the organization read.
Advertisement
On May 6, the California Highway Patrol encircled a group of protesters at the encampment, taking down tents and arresting 65 protesters, along with one injury.
Morgen Chalmiers, a UCSD student and one of the protest organizers, described the arrests as a violent action against peaceful students.
“Today, we saw UCSD administration willfully endanger communities of color, undocumented individuals, and other marginalized groups, whom we know are at a disproportionate risk of state violence,” Chalmiers said. “Today, we also witness the invasion of Rafah by the Israeli Occupation Forces, who train San Diego police, and we recognize the ties between militarism, police violence, and repression on our campus and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”
Authorities declared the encampment an unlawful assembly at about 5:45 a.m. Monday. Officers ordered the protesters to leave.
Chancellor Pradeep Khosla released a statement Sunday calling the protest an “illegal encampment,” and that the tents on Library Walk pose “an unacceptable safety and security hazard on campus.”
Advertisement
On May 8, more than 1,000 protesters marched at UCSD as a continuation of the ongoing demonstrations in support of the people of Gaza, as well as condemnations of school administration following the arrests.
Again, on May 10, UCSD students and faculty staged a walkout which saw more than 100 members of the UCSD community chant and march to Chancellor Pradeep Khosla’s home off campus. Many wore keffiyehs or academic dress and carried signs calling on the university to sever financial ties with Israel.
ABC 10News
Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that organized the rally, said its goal was to hold the biggest protest in campus history.
The UC system has blasted the union’s allegations and filed unfair labor practice complaints of its own, saying the union’s labor contract has a no-strike provision and that the union’s demands are outside the scope of union labor issues. The university has also rejected calls for amnesty.
“We are disheartened that UAW continues publicly escalating its unlawful strike in violation of its contracts’ no-strike clause and encouraging its members to disrupt and harm the ability of our students to navigate finals and other critical year-end activities successfully,” UC officials said in a statement Friday. “UAW’s goal to `maximize chaos and confusion’ has come to fruition, creating substantial and irreparable impacts on campuses and impacting our students at a crucial time of their education. We are hopeful PERB (Public Employment Relations Board) will intervene and ask the court to end this precedent-setting, unlawful action.”
Advertisement
The state’s Public Employment Relations Board previously declined the university’s request for an injunction that would have blocked the strike, but UC officials said the board issued a complaint against the union saying the walkout is “contrary to the no-strike clauses in their collective bargaining agreements.” Union officials said PERB has also called for both sides to meet and discuss the issues, forcing the university to the table rather than just seeking an injunction.
The union represents teaching assistants, readers, tutors, student researchers and academic researchers.
Gonzaga Bulldogs (5-7, 0-1 WCC) at San Diego Toreros (4-6, 0-1 WCC)
San Diego; Saturday, 5 p.m. EST
Advertisement
BOTTOM LINE: Gonzaga visits San Diego after Yvonne Ejim scored 20 points in Gonzaga’s 73-58 loss to the San Francisco Dons.
The Toreros have gone 3-3 at home. San Diego is 2-4 against opponents with a winning record.
The Bulldogs are 0-1 in WCC play. Gonzaga is 0-1 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 17.3 turnovers per game.
San Diego’s average of 3.2 made 3-pointers per game is 4.9 fewer made shots on average than the 8.1 per game Gonzaga gives up. Gonzaga averages 7.5 made 3-pointers per game this season, 1.7 more made shots on average than the 5.8 per game San Diego allows.
The Toreros and Bulldogs match up Saturday for the first time in WCC play this season.
Advertisement
TOP PERFORMERS: Kylie Horstmeyer is scoring 11.7 points per game with 4.4 rebounds and 1.7 assists for the Toreros.
Ejim is shooting 57.0% and averaging 19.8 points for the Bulldogs.
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Just as the holiday travel season gets underway, daily dense fog here has played havoc with passengers’ flight plans in and out of San Diego International Airport. And the potential for more disruption remains in play.
Over the past three days, nearly 800 flights coming into and leaving the airport were delayed, according to the flight tracking service, FlightAware.
While the National Weather Service is seeing signs that lowered visibility from fog may be moving inland, there still remains the possibility of a late night advisory.
“We think closer to the Interstate15 corridor we may see areas of dense fog tonight, but there’s still the question of when it becomes widespread enough for it to be an issue,” said Casey Oswant, a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service, on Friday. “The fog can be kind of finicky, but now most of the dense fog has dissipated from the coast, so we need to see dense fog observed along the coast before we pull the trigger on an advisory.”
Advertisement
By early evening, there were only low clouds emerging near the coast, although dense fog could still form overnight, said National Weather Service meteorologist Brandt Maxwell.
It’s still too early to say exactly where there may be fog, although it could be most prevalent slightly inland from the coastal area, east of Interstate 5, as opposed to west of the freeway, which was the case Thursday night, Maxwell said.
San Diego airport officials are forecasting that as many as 1.3 million people will fly in and out of the airport over an 18-day holiday period that began Thursday. Some of the busiest times at the airport are expected to be Friday through Monday. The airport posted a travel alert Friday morning on social media advising passengers to be “aware we’re experiencing some flight delays due to fog. Check with your airline before leaving for the airport.”
Visibility could be as low as 1 mile this evening as a result of fog, Oswant said, but that’s not nearly as bad as Thursday night when visibility dropped to just a quarter mile around the airport at 8 p.m. It later fell to below a quarter mile up until 4 a.m. Friday, she added.
There were more than 300 flight delays in and out of the airport on Friday alone, according to FlightAware. Part of that is due to the ripple effect of consecutive days of delayed flights as airlines try to get passengers on later flights.
Advertisement
“Year-round weather conditions can impact both departing and arriving flights,” airport spokesperson Nicole Hall said Friday. “Beginning on Thursday and continuing into Friday, a dense low fog cover impacted visibility at the San Diego International Airport. Consequently, more than 100 flights were diverted to other airports and about 30 were canceled. It is possible that fog will persist and continue to create challenges.”
She noted that Airport Authority staff and volunteers will be onsite to help passengers and minimize crowding in the airline gate areas.
As a precaution, she said that passengers should continue to check the status of their flights before getting to the airport. Fog or no fog, she added, delays are a fact of life when it comes to flying, especially during one of the airport’s busiest seasons.
SAN DIEGO — A man suspected of placing his wife’s body in a freezer at their Allied Gardens home allegedly forced a friend at gunpoint to help conceal the death, according to an autopsy report unsealed Thursday.
The report by the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office also states the body of Margaret Haxby-Jones was only discovered last December after her husband suffered a stroke and the friend came forward to tell the woman’s family where the body had been hidden for approximately nine years.
The details come a week after San Diego police revealed their suspicions around the involvement of the husband, Robert Haxby, who died in February. Police said they investigated the possibility that Haxby hid the body so his wife’s benefits would continue to be paid out. However, investigators could not gather enough evidence to prosecute the case.
Police did not respond to requests for comment Thursday on whether the unnamed friend who allegedly helped hide the body was being investigated for any possible crimes. A spokesperson for the district attorney referred questions to police.
Advertisement
The body was discovered at the home on Zion Avenue near Eldridge Street, where Haxby-Jones and her husband lived.
The friend who spoke with investigators said she had died from natural causes at 72 years old, the autopsy report says. She was reportedly obese, in a declining state of health and suffered from dementia. However, the autopsy report states that, due to the prolonged concealment of the body, the cause of death could not be determined.
Her husband concealed her death for financial purposes, according to the report. He coerced the friend, reportedly at gunpoint, to help move the body into a chest freezer in the backyard of the house, officials said. The body was concealed with a tarp, and the friend was sworn to secrecy.
Upon the discovery of her body, the life of Haxby-Jones became a mystery to solve for the Allied Gardens community.
Haxby-Jones had worked for 20 years as a nurse anesthetist before she resigned her post in 1999.
Advertisement
Haxby-Jones purchased the Zion Avenue home in the mid-1980s, according to a woman connected to the family who spoke to the Union-Tribune. She married her husband but the two ran afoul of the Internal Revenue Service and a lien of $13,000 was put on the home.
The issue with the IRS was resolved around the same time as her disappearance in 2015.
Between 2013 and 2020, police responded to the home nearly 20 times for calls ranging from welfare checks to mental health situations to reports of elder abuse. None of these calls led to the discovery of her body.
According to the autopsy report, three weeks before her body was discovered, Haxby-Jones’ husband was admitted to the hospital. When his death became imminent, the friend told the family on Dec. 21 that Haxby-Jones was in a freezer on the property behind the house that was “excessively cluttered with belongings,” the autopsy report reads.
The family went over to the home and did not initially find the freezer that night. But the next day, the family returned and found the freezer tucked against the outside wall of the house, according to the report.
Advertisement
It was determined that the last time Haxby-Jones had been seen alive was about 10 years earlier, according to the report. She would have been 81 years old at the time of her discovery.
Police last week said the case has been placed on inactive status pending new information.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25782636/247422_ChatGPT_anniversary_CVirginia.jpg "Inside the launch — and future — of ChatGPT")
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25789444/1258459915.jpg "OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever says the way AI is built is about to change")
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25546252/STK169_Mark_Zuckerburg_CVIRGINIA_D.jpg "Meta asks the US government to block OpenAI’s switch to a for-profit")
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23951353/STK043_VRG_Illo_N_Barclay_3_Meta.jpg "Meta’s Instagram boss: who posted something matters more in the AI age")