Thousands of University of California healthcare, research and technical employees voted to authorize a strike, citing what they described as systemic and ongoing staffing shortages that erode patient care and hurt research operations.
The strike authorization comes amid strained negotiations between the university and University Professional and Technical Employees-CWA Local 9119, the union representing nearly 20,000 employees in various research labs and medical facilities across the 10-campus UC system.
The unionized workers include nurse case managers, mental health counselors, optometrists, pharmacists, physical therapists, clinical researchers, IT analysts and animal health technicians.
The union said it’s planning a three-day strike beginning Feb. 26.
A strike could affect operations at hospitals and clinics as well as research at the UC on cancer, food safety, virology, climate change and other issues. Among union members are lab technicians at a UC Davis lab critical to California’s efforts to track and prevent bird flu as it spreads through cattle herds.
The union, known as UPTE, said it called for the strike vote because the university has failed to bargain in good faith in negotiations that began last June. It accuses UC of unlawfully imposing “draconian” restrictions on where workers can picket and retaliating against some employees at UC San Francisco who participated in a two-day work stoppage in November.
Union officials said the university has improperly raised healthcare costs and has refused to engage meaningfully in discussion of staffing vacancies as well as problems with recruitment and promotions.
“We’re hoping this will send a message to UC about our members being fed up with these unfair labor practices,” UPTE President Dan Russell said in a statement. “We hope this will produce a change in UC’s behavior.”
Union members voted overwhelmingly in support of the strike authorization — with 98% voting in favor — the union said Friday. The union declined to provide a count of total votes cast, although it has said that at least 9,000 votes were submitted in the first week.
For its part, the university denies that it faces a staffing crisis, and said it has offered robust wages and benefits and accused UPTE of prematurely leaving the bargaining table.
“It’s disheartening that UPTE continues to talk about striking and insisting UC come back to the bargaining table when they didn’t show up for the last scheduled bargaining session and then declared negotiations were at an impasse before responding to UC’s previous offers,” UC spokesperson Heather Hansen said in an email.
Hansen said UC “has been and remains ready to settle these contracts.”
In the event of a strike, Hansen said that “the University [system] is prepared to make every effort to ensure the critical operations of the University system, which includes patient care, continue at a level of excellence that UC patients, students, faculty, and staff expect.”
The university has proposed a 5% across-the-board pay increase beginning July 1 and a 3% wage increase the second and third years of the contract. It also offered to raise all lower-paid employees to pay of at least $25 an hour by July 1.
The union contends the pay offer is lower than wages the university has agreed to for other employees such as nurses, and would leave UPTE-represented workers struggling with ballooning expenses due to inflation.
Several workers in interviews cited high workloads and burnout as reasons for voting to approve a strike.
Amelia Cutten, 40, a behavioral health counselor at UC Santa Cruz, said she and about a dozen other counselors and psychologists at the Cowell Student Health Center struggle to keep up with large caseloads.
“It’s really hard when we are trying to do our work and serve students who are coming to us at really critical times,” Cutten said. “We want our students to have the best care.”
Maryam Azizadah, a clinical research coordinator assistant at UCLA working with cancer patients, said that her job requires a high level of attention and expertise to understand finicky protocols of various clinical trials. She described juggling requests, rushing to order tissue samples to determine eligibility for some 70 patients at a time.
“I felt overwhelmed by the barrage of emails and requests and responsibilities, and I just couldn’t do it all,” Azizadah said. “I found myself making these mistakes and missing emails because I was one person doing the job of two people and I felt really guilty.”
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