Patient Care Workers Announce Strike

AFSCME 3299 workers will begin a two-day strike across all five UC medical centers on May 21.

Written by Mekala Neelakantan

Nearly 13,000 UC Patient Care Technical Employees of the EX Unit issued a 10-day notice to the UC Office of the President on Friday, announcing intentions to begin a two-day strike at all five UC medical centers on May 21.

UC hospital service workers of the SX Unit will join the technical workers, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299, in a sympathy strike at the picket lines.

The announcement was released four days after patient care workers completed a union-wide vote showing 97 percent support in favor of a strike.

“The parties have completed all statutory post-impasse procedures and once again reached an impasse in collective bargaining negotiations regarding terms and conditions of employment for the EX bargaining unit,” AFSCME Local 3299 Director Liz Perlman wrote in the strike notice.

According to AFSCME, the strike follows nearly 10 months of stalled negotiations and mediations between UC hospitals and union workers regarding worker contracts.

“It’s time to put patients before profits,” AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger said in an AFSCME release. “This strike is about standing up for students, patients and taxpayers the UC Medical System was intended to serve. UC’s increasingly unsafe staffing practices and growing culture of executive entitlement are undermining patient care quality and unnecessarily putting lives at risk.”

Immediately following the strike announcement, the University of California declared intentions to seek a restraining order against AFSCME, citing the strike as a threat to public safety and health and berating AFSCME for settling on a strike before exploring all bargaining options.

“It is highly inappropriate for AFSCME to threaten services to patients as a tactic in negotiations about pension benefit reforms,” UC Vice President for Systemwide Human Resources Dwaine Duckett said in a UCOP release. “Other UC unions representing 14 bargaining units have agreed to our pension reforms, which also apply to faculty and non-union staff. AFSCME wants special treatment, which is unfair to the rest of the UC workforce.”

Nevertheless, the strike is set to begin next Tuesday across all five UC medical centers, including that of UCSD. AFSCME expects thousands—including respiratory therapists, nursing aids, MRI technologists, surgical technicians and pharmacy technicians—to participate in the strike and has taken measures to ensure that emergency patient care needs be met during the strike with a newly created patient protection task force.

[Source]: UCSD The Guardian