Thousands of University of California academic workers who went on strike at six campuses protesting administrators’ response to pro-Palestinian protests have returned to the job under court order, but their union vowed more protests to come.

According to Reuters, an Orange County Superior Court judge late on Friday granted a temporary restraining order sought by the university, which asserted that the walkout stemmed from non-labour issues and that it violated the no-strike clause in the union’s contract.

University officials had originally petitioned the California Public Employment Relations Board, but the panel twice rejected their requests for an injunction. Unionised academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars walked off the job over what they called unfair labour practices in the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks.

The work stoppage was organised by the United Auto Workers union Local 4811, which represents some 48,000 non-tenured academic employees across 10 UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The protest strike began on May 20 at the UC Santa Cruz campus and was expanded over the following two weeks to encompass UCLA, UC Davis near Sacramento, and campuses at San Diego, Santa Barbara and Irvine. Those six campuses account for roughly 31,500 UAW members. The UC system has a total of 10 campuses.

Continuation of the strike “would have caused irreversible setback to the students’ academic achievements and may have stalled critical research projects in the final quarter,” Melissa Matella, UC’s associate vice president for labour relations, said in a statement welcoming the restraining order.

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