UC Service and Patient Care Workers Vote 99% YES to Authorize a ULP Strike across University of California System

AFSCME 3299 has filed ULP Charges (Case SF-CD-1477H) against UC for Bad Faith Bargaining

OAKLAND, CA, UNITED STATES, November 1, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- AFSCME Local 3299 has announced that University of California Service and Patient Care workers voted to authorize a systemwide Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) Strike at the University of California with 99% support. The strike authorization, which affects more than 37,000 UC workers across all ten university campuses and five medical centers, comes just weeks after Local 3299 filed formal charges (Case SF-CD-1477H) with the State’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) alleging that the university had engaged in illegal bad faith bargaining.

“By refusing to bargain in good faith, the University has made it clear that it does not value the frontline workers who clean its facilities, serve students food, and treat patients,” said AFSCME Local 3299 President Michael Avant. “If UC won’t meet its most basic legal responsibilities to its employees, our members have made it clear that we are prepared to hold them accountable by exercising our legal right to strike.”

AFSCME Local 3299 has been working to negotiate successor contracts for more than 11,000 service and more than 25,000 patient care workers for nearly a year. The existing contract for Patient Care workers expired on July 31st, and the contract for Service workers will expire on October 31st. In its ULP charge, Local 3299 alleges that the university failed to bargain over recently announced plans to unilaterally increase employee healthcare costs, refused to provide critical staff vacancy and financial information relevant to the bargaining process, and detailed a pattern of UC representatives repeatedly coming to bargaining sessions unprepared and without authority to negotiate.

“For the past year, our bargaining team has been prepared to engage in good-faith negotiations over the job quality needs of our members, and the growing staff vacancy crisis that is eroding the quality of services at UC campuses and hospitals,” Avant added. “Instead of being a constructive and transparent partner in negotiations, UC has been unprepared, unresponsive, and has attempted to illegally sidestep the bargaining process altogether.”

Last year, the UC CFO Nathan Brostrom told the UC Board of Regents that the university’s staff vacancy rate had tripled since before the pandemic. Research(1) has since detailed a decline in real wages and a growing housing affordability crisis(2) plaguing the university’s frontline health and service workforce, leaving many to endure multi-hour commutes, or sleep in their cars(3). The share of this workforce that would be income eligible for limited government housing subsidies has nearly tripled since 2017(4).

“UC’s serial lawbreaking at the bargaining table hurts not only hurts the workers it routinely praised as ‘heroes’ during the pandemic, but also harms the students and patients we are here to serve,” added Local 3299’s ULP Committee Chair Monica Martinez. “It is past time for the University to respect the lawful collective bargaining process, and to treat its employees and communities with the respect that we deserve.”

Having authorized a ULP Strike, AFSCME Local 3299 would provide the University with 10 days’ notice before any work stoppage.

(1) https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/094/970/original/A3299_PricedOut_WhitePaper_Final_web.pdf
(2) https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/110/931/original/Public_Cost_of_UC_Housing_Crisis_-_revised_pub_date.pdf
(3) https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article278079312.html
(4) https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-01/uc-healthcare-and-service-workers-demand-wage-hike-and-housing-aid

Todd Stenhouse
on behalf of AFSCME 3299
toddstenhouse@gmail.com