Tens of thousands of University of California workers on Wednesday walked off the job for a two-day strike over wages and conditions at their medical facilities and campuses.
Starting just after midnight, about 40,000 service and patient care workers across the system walked out of hospitals and other campuses, including UC Berkeley, UCSF and UC Santa Cruz, according to AFSCME Local 3299. There's a plan in place for some workers to return in the event of an emergency.
AFSCME Local 3299 is the same union that walked off the job in 2018 to push for better conditions and a better contract. The existing contract for patient care workers expired at the end of July, and the contract for service workers expired Oct. 31.
Striking worker include those who treat patients, clean facilities and serve food to students in campus cafeterias.
A union spokesman Todd Stenhouse says facilities are understaffed, employees are overworked, and wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. The union recently filed a compaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board to force UC negotiators to bargain in good faith.
"They have bargained in bad faith," Stenhouse said. "They have showed up unprepared, unresponsive, said no authority to negotiate. They even went so far as to impose hundreds of dollars in health care increases on workers who already can't afford the rent, who can’t afford to put food on the table."
UC officials refuted that claim in a statement that reads in part, "From January to May, University of California and AFSCME bargaining teams met 22 times and worked collaboratively on proposals for the UC AFSCME-represented employees."
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UC's statement added that its proposal would increase union members' pay by an average of 26% over five years and would offer credits to offset health care costs in some cases.
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