University of California workers strike for pay and health care

By Sheri Williams

Nearly 40,000 union workers with the University of California system staged a two-day strike in late February to protest Unfair Labor Practices.

Members of AFSCME Local 3299 and University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), which represent service, technical and healthcare workers, picketed at every UC campus and medical facility across the state, including the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

The strike came just weeks after Local 3299 filed new charges with the State’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) alleging that UC has engaged in a coordinated effort to silence and intimidate workers from speaking out about the growing affordability and staff vacancy crisis plaguing frontline university employees.

“Instead of addressing the decline in real wages that has fueled the staff exodus at UC Medical Centers and Campuses at the bargaining table, UC has chosen to illegally implement arbitrary rules aimed at silencing workers who are raising concerns while limiting their access to union representatives,” said AFSCME Local 3299 President Michael Avant. “UC’s blatantly illegal actions are interfering with workers’ free speech. It’s time the University started listening to us and engaging in constructive negotiations rather than intimidation tactics. That’s why workers will exercise their legal right to strike.”

Contracts for more than 37,000 AFSCME Local 3299 represented patient care and service workers expired in 2024, and the union has been working to negotiate successor agreements for more than a year. With real wages declining and the cost of living skyrocketing, more than 13,000 UC service and Patient Care workers have left their jobs over the last four years, the union said.

“We are not here with our hands out. We are not here begging. We are not asking ‘Pretty, pretty please,’” said Sacramento Central Labor Council Chief of Staff Volma Volcy during a rally at the UC Davis action. “We are saying ‘We’re here. We’ve been working. We show up. We do the job. We take care of the patients. We are here for the hospitals. We are here for the school. We are here for the research. We are here for all of it. Where are you? Why are we not getting paid what we deserve? Why are we not getting paid what we deserve?’”

The strike comes during a period of understaffing and stress on existing employees. Last year, UC CFO Nathan Brostrom told the UC Board of Regents that the university’s staff vacancy rate had tripled since before the pandemic, according to the union. Research has since detailed a decline in real wages and a growing housing affordability crisis plaguing the university’s frontline workforce, leaving many to endure multi-hour commutes, or sleeping in their cars. The share of AFSCME represented UC workers that are income eligible for limited government housing subsidies has nearly tripled since 2017.

“Through its serial lawbreaking, the University has made it clear that it does not value the frontline workers who clean its facilities, serve food, and treat patients,” Avant added. “UC’s efforts to illegally silence workers who are struggling the most are not a solution to the workforce supply and affordability problems facing this institution, but a glaring symptom of the problem that is driving workers onto picket lines.”