University of California workers, 37,000 strong, flex their bargaining muscles

Patient Care and Service Workers represented by AFSCME 3299 hold an informational picket line at UCSF. San Francisco, October 9, 2024. | Janice Rothstein

SAN FRANCISCO—Essential workers at the University of California’s campuses, including custodians, food service workers, security guards, groundskeepers, nurses’ aides, hospital secretaries, licensed vocational nurses, and other employees who help patients and students, were celebrated during the height of the pandemic but not these days by their bosses.

Their pay did not keep pace with the last few years’ skyrocketing inflation. And with university management not budging on health care cost issues, the workers, most of them workers of color, women, or both, are headed for a strike authorization vote on October 28.

So after nearly a year of bargaining with their union, AFSCME Local 3299, UC management sent a bargaining team that recently sought to sidestep bargaining altogether by announcing it would unilaterally impose dramatic increases to employee healthcare premiums, co-pays, and the cost of prescription drugs, local President Michael Avant said in a union press release.

“Instead of working to reach agreement that resolves these issues, university representatives showed up empty handed and without authority to negotiate, ignoring repeated requests for time-sensitive information,” he added.

As a result, California’s Public Employment Relations Board declared the University of California and Local 3299— which represents almost 37,000 UC Service and Patient Care technical workers in two bargaining units—at impasse. The Patient Care workers’ contract expired on July 31 and the contract for Service Workers expires October 31.  A UC-wide strike vote of all AFSCME 3299-represented workers is scheduled for October 28-30.

Then, given the impasse, the workers will decide whether to authorize a ULP (unfair labor practices) strike. If AFSCME Local 3299’s membership votes to authorize a strike, the University would receive 10 days’ notice before any work stoppage.

The looming strike is important because Local 3299 is the University of California’s largest employee union, representing more than 30,000 Service workers (SX), Patient Care Technical workers (EX), Skilled Craft workers (K7), and more at UC’s 10 campuses, five medical centers, numerous clinics, research laboratories, and the UC-Hastings College of Law.

It’s also the state’s third-largest employer and single largest landlord, though it only houses about 32% of its students. Its workers face high housing costs, system-wide. If those workers walk, system administrators, even as they scramble, will likely have to shut schools down—due to the managers’ impasse declaration.

“By refusing to bargain in good faith, the university has engaged in a pattern of illegal and unfair labor practices that harms both workers and the community we are here to serve,” added Local 3299’s ULP Committee Co-Chairs Monica Martinez and Enrique Rosas.

“That is why we have filed charges today with the Public Employment Relations Board, and why our ULP Committee is asking members to exercise their legal right to authorize a strike.  It is past time for the University to respect the lawful collective bargaining process, and to treat the employees who make its campuses and medical centers run with the respect that they deserve.”

At issue are inadequate wage rates and housing affordability. Falling wages and rising prices make it difficult for UC service workers to make ends meet.  In addition, while the UC system is expanding its real estate footprints, opening new hospitals and paying ever-increasing raises and bonuses to its managers, CEOs and Chancellors, it is less and less able to attract workers to staff its facilities, as workers try to find better pay and affordable housing elsewhere.

On October 16, ahead of the UC-wide strike vote scheduled for October 28–30, thousands of Patient Care and Service Workers rallied, marched and protested at simultaneous noon rallies at five of UC’s ten campuses: Sacramento, San Francisco, Riverside, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Similar actions are slated or have already taken place at the other five.

More than 80 percent of these essential workers, without whom UC’s prestigious hospitals and research and teaching schools could not function, are people of color and 60 percent are women.

Workers at the rallies expressed they are tired of UC’s bad-faith bargaining. People’s World attended and walked the informational picket line at UC San Francisco’s Parnassus Heights hilltop medical and research center site, where wind-buffeted picketers made repeated chants of “UC, UC you can’t hide–We can see your greedy side!” and “Affordable housing–When do we want it? Now!” and “UC, UC you’re no good. Treat your workers like you should!”

Joined the rally

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) joined an October 10 U of C Berkeley rally in solidarity with AFSCME 3299 members and students in the fight for affordable housing and a fair contract. “By standing together, we can hold U of C Regents and Blackstone accountable to the needs of workers, students, and community members!” alliance tweeted.

Local elected officials, like San Francisco City Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (D), State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and State Rep. Liz Ortega, D-Hayward, supported the AFSCME workers on twitter/X and attended rallies.

The union’s Executive Vice President and former President Kathryn Lybarger, tweeted on X “We’re not asking for the second homes or million-dollar salaries that UC executives get. We just need to catch up, to work safe and live safe.”

The union elaborated on that point in an October 10 press release, headlined “UC gives massive raises to top executives, but remains tone-deaf to housing affordability and cost of living crises driving frontline staff vacancies.”

“The University of California publicly acknowledged a staff vacancy crisis that ultimately threatens the quality of services it can deliver to its students and patients, yet the only employees it is investing in are its highest paid executives,” Local 3299 President Michael Avant said then.

“Workers are an early warning system for the students and patients who rely on us. The university is creating a dangerous staff vacancy crisis by refusing to pay frontline workers enough to keep pace with rising costs, and by ignoring our pleas for affordable housing solutions so workers can live near their jobs.”

The real wages of frontline UC patient care technicians and service workers have been on a steady decline since the COVID 19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the university recently granted 30% pay raises to its highest paid chancellors—who now earn between $800,000 and $1.2 million per year and receive generous UC housing subsidies.

By comparison, a growing number of AFSCME-represented UC workers must sleep in their cars or get on waiting lists for government housing programs in order to find shelter near work—or endure multi-hour commutes. Amidst a rapid expansion of facilities that is putting even more cost pressures on local housing markets, AFSCME 3299 warns a UC’s existing staff vacancy crisis is likely to get worse.

Last year, the University of California acknowledged its staff vacancy rate had tripled since before the pandemic, a dynamic which research has since linked to declining real wages and a growing housing affordability.

In 2023, research showed real wages for frontline workers declined by an average of 8% under the weight of inflation since 2017. Over that period, the highest-paid executives saw their base pay levels grow substantially, while receiving on-campus residences, access to low-cost mortgages, and below-market-rate down payment assistance that can even be used to subsidize acquisition of second homes.

As U of C stepped up its acquisition of new academic, research and medical facilities, it also invested billions of dollars—drawn partially from worker pension funds—to prop up speculative private equity funds linked to rising rents and evictions around the world.  Recent news reports show these investments are already falling short of promised returns.

UC’s AFSCME-represented patient care and service workers have repeatedly called for the university system to not only boost wages for workers struggling to keep up with rising costs, but to invest its billions in unrestricted assets and unused land parcels to help provide affordable housing solutions for its lower-paid workers. The university now excludes these workers from institutional housing assistance programs, even though the share of these workers who are income-eligible for federal housing vouchers has nearly tripled since 2017, at an annual public cost that could be as high as $164 million.

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Janice Rothstein is a retired UCSF worker, a Licensed Vocational Nurse and an AFSCME Local 3299 retiree.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Janice Rothstein

Janice Rothstein is a retired nurse and long-time activist for people's justice. She has a lifelong itch for media, especially film, music, and literature.