Service workers, including medical technicians, therapists, billers, custodians and food service, laundry and security workers, plan to strike today and Thursday, forming picket lines on University of California campuses statewide, including outside UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla.
Having already demonstrated in the same location when their contract ended in August, members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 are striking for better pay amid high housing costs that often keep employees from living anywhere near where they work.
Local 3299 represents about 40,000 workers statewide and, at UC San Diego, according to previous statements from the university, about 4,300 work for the health system and nearly 2,800 on campus.
The union accuses the university of sidestepping the normal bargaining process to unilaterally increase employee health insurance premiums and of “serial lawbreaking” at the bargaining table.
“The epidemic of understaffing at UC facilities, and the related cost of living and housing affordability crises plaguing frontline UC workers are only getting worse,” said Michael Avant, the local’s president, in a statement released Tuesday.
For its part, the university is working to counter assertions that its bargaining strategy has been anything but fair, indicating that it has offered 26 proposals and 36 counterproposals and claiming that the union “has not responded to or acknowledged any UC proposals since May.”
Health care strikes have become common in 2024 as workers at all levels flex their bargaining muscles in an environment of increased demand served by a workforce that lost many qualified caregivers and support staff to burnout during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nurses at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego are among the most recent to walk off their jobs and eventually signed a contract they considered more favorable than what executives offered during the collective bargaining process. Kaiser Permanente workers in Southern California have been even more bold, launching an open-ended strike now in its fifth week. Sharp HealthCare and the Service Employees International Union came together at the last minute to avert an impending strike, brokering a three-year contract on Nov. 11 that is now undergoing ratification by members of the bargaining unit.
The university says it has made “strong economic offers” at the bargaining table. On a website created “to ensure you have the most up-to-date information” regarding wage and benefit proposals, the university says it will set the minimum wage for all workers in the bargaining unit at $25 per hour starting July 1, 2025, and would increase by 26 percent over a five-year contract term. There would also be monthly credits of between $75 and $100 to help defray increased health insurance premiums, expanded vacation and sick leave. Juneteenth would also be added as a paid holiday.
