Since November UC “workers” (actually union dues payers) have gone on strike four times. More evidence they work for the union, not the people of California.
““You want to do a hiring freeze as you’re expanding 2,000 new hospital beds last year, you’re just making [understaffing] worse,” said Todd Stenhouse, a spokesperson for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents some of the striking workers. “It is the textbook definition of bad-faith bargaining.”
UC put the freeze in place in response to the “financial uncertainties” Michael Drake, its president, highlighted last month, system spokeswoman Heather Hansen told The Examiner in a statement Wednesday. Many other colleges and universities are taking similar steps, she said.
The hiring halt affects future hires, not current employees, and the system is leaving decisions on how to implement the freeze up to each campus, based on their individual situations, Hansen said. The strike, meanwhile, is costly to both workers and the university, she said.”
If you refuse to show up for work, that means you QUIT. Accept the resignations and hire folks that work for the UC system, not the union. Until then, control is in the hands of the unions—we just pay the bills.
9K UCSF workers join systemwide strike over hiring freeze
By Natalia Gurevich, SF Examiner, 5/1/25 https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/health/9k-ucsf-workers-walk-out-in-fourth-strike-since-november/article_5da83190-d83f-45f2-9f22-163ed7a9173a.html
More than 20,000 University of California workers — including 9,000 in San Francisco — went on strike on Thursday to protest the hiring freeze the school system announced last month.
The freeze threatens to exacerbate UC’s existing staffing shortage, which was already heightened by the system’s recent acquisition of a slew of new hospitals, union organizers say. Organizers say the hiring halt represents yet another example of the kind of bad-faith negotiating that had already prompted them to strike three other times this school year.
“You want to do a hiring freeze as you’re expanding 2,000 new hospital beds last year, you’re just making [understaffing] worse,” said Todd Stenhouse, a spokesperson for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents some of the striking workers. “It is the textbook definition of bad-faith bargaining.”
UC put the freeze in place in response to the “financial uncertainties” Michael Drake, its president, highlighted last month, system spokeswoman Heather Hansen told The Examiner in a statement Wednesday. Many other colleges and universities are taking similar steps, she said.
The hiring halt affects future hires, not current employees, and the system is leaving decisions on how to implement the freeze up to each campus, based on their individual situations, Hansen said. The strike, meanwhile, is costly to both workers and the university, she said.
“This is especially harmful considering the current economic and fiscal uncertainty in higher education and nationally,” Hansen said. “We are hopeful for meaningful progress with both unions so that we can turn our attention to the state and federal funding concerns.”
Thursday’s strike is the latest development in the acrimonious contract negotiations between the UC system and the AFSCME and the University Professional and Technical Employees CWA Local 9119. The school system’s contracts with both unions expired last fall. Despite months’ worth of bargaining, UC hasn’t been able to reach a deal with either. The unions have lodged numerous allegations of unfair labor practices and bargaining in bad faith against the school system.
Around 4,000 UPTE workers and 5,000 AFSCME workers employed by UCSF at the university’s Mission Bay campus and at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital took part in Thursday’s walkout.
Both unions previously went out on strike last month at the UCSF Parnassus campus and at Mission Bay in March and in November. In addition to understaffing, workers have been pushing UC to address their rising cost-of-living and increases in their health care costs.
Thursday’s strike was meant to draw attention to the vacancies that have plagued the system since the COVID-19 pandemic, Stenhouse said. UC made that longstanding understaffing issue worse by acquiring new facilities, he said. Last March, UC Irvine acquired four hospitals from Tenet Healthcare — Fountain Valley Regional Hospital, Lakewood Regional Medical Center, Los Alamitos Medical Center, and Placentia-Linda Hospital.
“You’ve got all these new hospitals and facilities, and you have nobody to staff them,” Stenhouse said.
The school system is scheduled to resume bargaining with UPTE next week, Hansen said. Wednesday night, UC offered AFSCME what the school system called a “comprehensive and competitive last, best and final offer” that includes an increase in workers’ minimum wage to $25 an hour and a 5% overall wage increase.
