Thousands of University of California healthcare, research and technology employees voted to authorize strikes, citing systemic and ongoing staff shortages that undermine patient care and undermine research actions.
The strike mandate was amid intense negotiations between the university and the university’s professional and technical staff, CWA Local 9119, which represents nearly 20,000 employees in various research laboratories and medical facilities in the 10-campus UC system.
Union workers include nurse case managers, mental health consultants, optometrists, pharmacists, physical therapists, clinical researchers, IT analysts and animal health technicians.
The union said it plans to conduct a three-day strike starting on February 26.
The strike could impact hospitals and clinic operations and UC’s research on cancer, food safety, virology, climate change and other issues. Among the union members are laboratory technicians from the University of California, Davis Crucial to California’s efforts Track and prevent the spread of bird flu in cattle.
The union, known as Upte, said it requested a strike vote because the university failed to sincerely bargain for negotiations that began last June. It accuses UC of illegally “hard” restrictions on where workers can picket and retaliate against certain employees The two-day work stops in November.
Union officials say the university has Improperly lifted health care costs and refuse to meaningfully participate in discussing staffing vacancies and recruitment and promotion issues.
“We hope this will send a message to the UC that our members are bored by these unfair labor practices,” Upte President Dan Russell said in a statement. “We hope this will change UC.” behavior.”
Union members on Friday said union members supported the strike mandate with an overwhelming vote, with 98% of them voted in favor. The union refused to provide the total number of votes, although It has already said At least 9,000 votes were submitted in the first week.
The university denied that it faced a staffing crisis and said it had provided strong wages and benefits, and accused of leaving the negotiation form too early.
“It is frustrating that upte continues to talk about the strike and insists that UC returns to the bargaining table when it is not attending the last scheduled negotiation meeting, and then declares the negotiations deadlock before responding to UC’s previous offer,” UC spokesman Heather, Heather Hansen said in an email.
Hansen said UC “has and is still ready to resolve these contracts.”
If a strike occurs, Hansen said: [system] Be prepared to make every effort to ensure that critical operations of the university system, including patient care, continue to be at the level of excellence expected by UC patients, students, faculty and staff. ”
Upte-CWA Local 9119 member phone bank on Tuesday called the bank in Westwood’s office, calling workers to vote in a strike authorization vote. (Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
(Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
University Proposed The 5% increase in full wages starting from July 1, with a 3% increase in the second and third years of the contract. It also proposed to raise all low-paying employees to pay at least $25 per hour from July 1 to the time of the year.
The union believes that the salary offer is lower than the wages that the university agrees to pay for other employees such as nurses and will leave utte uspertertermentpermentpermentpermentper because of inflation.
Several workers in the interview pointed out that high workload and burnout were the reasons for the vote to approve the strike.
Amelia Cutten, 40, a behavioral health consultant at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said she and more than a dozen other counselors and psychologists at the Cowell Student Health Center. Trying to keep up with big cases.
“It’s really hard when we try to do our job and come to our students for a really critical period,” Carten said. “We want our students to be best cared for.”
Maryam Azizadah, assistant clinical research coordinator at UCLA who works with cancer patients, said her work requires a high level of attention and expertise to understand the picky protocols of various clinical trials. She described a juggling request, eager to order tissue samples to determine the eligibility of approximately 70 patients.
“I was overwhelmed by the slam of emails, requests and responsibilities, and I just couldn’t do it,” Azizadah said. “I found myself making these mistakes and lacking emails because I was a job for two people, I’m really introverted.”
