UCSD Lays Off Hundreds of Frontline Health Workers, while Executives Prepare to Get End of Year Bonuses
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 24, 2024
CONTACT: Todd Stenhouse, (916) 397-1131, toddstenhouse@gmail.com
UCSD Lays Off Hundreds of Frontline Health Workers, while Executives Prepare to Get End of Year Bonuses
Layoffs come after UCSD spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new hospital acquisitions and pay raises for top Executives, such as CEO Patty Maysent
San Diego – UC San Diego Health this week sent layoff notices to hundreds of frontline health workers this week—including more than a 100 AFSCME 3299 represented medical and lab technicians, hospital assistants, and nursing staff who have been working without a contract for nearly a year. The move comes despite UCSD earning more than $340 million in profits last year, spending nearly $500 million on hospital acquisitions and expansions since 2023, and despite employees repeatedly raising concerns about understaffing.
The move also comes just days before the end of UCSD Health’s current fiscal year, when Executives like UCSD Health CEO Patty Maysent—who receives a $1.4 million base salary and got a 40% pay raise in 2023—stand to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in end of year incentive bonuses.
“UCSD’s layoff announcement has nothing to do with supporting patients or financial necessity, and everything to do with lining the pockets of hospital executives whose end of year bonuses are tied to draconian cost cutting,” said AFSCME Local 3299 President and UCSD Health Patient Transporter Michael Avant. “For more than a year, frontline health workers have been raising concerns about declining job quality and acute staffing shortages at UC Health—and this action will make both problems worse.”
According to documents presented to the UC Board of Regents in November of 2024, UCSD Health posted and net income (profit) of $342 million in Fiscal Year 2024, and projects this annual amount to grow to more than $700 million by 2035.
While UCSD CEO Maysent received $445,000 in year-end bonuses last year on top of her seven figure base salary, the average annual wage of the frontline patient care workers receiving layoff notices this week was $66,000.
In 2023, the UC CFO Nathan Brostrom told the UC Board of Regents that the university’s staff vacancy rate had tripled since before the pandemic, and more recent press reporting has detailed some of the impacts, including longer patient wait times at UC Hospitals. Research has highlighted 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 sleep in their cars. The share of this workforce that is income eligible for limited government housing subsidies has nearly tripled since 2017.
“There is no evidence that UCSD’s actions this week were financially necessary, nor consistent with its frontline staffing needs. Instead, there is a continuing pattern of the institution’s Executive class shortchanging the frontline workers who care for patients every day in order to maximize profits while extracting even larger bonuses for themselves. It is nothing short of shameful, and our members are prepared to stand up and fight for respect we have earned, and the quality care our patients deserve.”
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AFSCME Local 3299 represents more than 37,000 Service and Patient Care Technical workers at UC’s 10 campuses, 5 medical centers, clinics, and research laboratories.
