20,000 CWA Healthcare Workers at the University of California Prepare to Strike

Twenty thousand University of California (UC) healthcare, research, and technical professionals have voted by an overwhelming 98% percent margin to authorize an unfair labor practice strike. The strike will occur February 26–28 across UC campuses and medical centers. The workers are members of the Union of Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE-CWA Local 9119) providing patient care and student support, as well as conducting lifesaving research, including critical testing of the nation’s poultry and livestock for communicable diseases like bird flu.

Workers cite several issues for the strike announcement, including the university’s refusal to disclose essential information about staffing vacancies, its unilateral decision to impose healthcare cost increases on members, and the implementation of speech-restrictive policies that make it harder for workers to blow the whistle on the ongoing staffing crisis. UPTE-CWA Local 9119 members have been participating in bargaining since June 2024, with all contracts expiring at the end of October 2024.

"UC has refused to engage in meaningful dialogue or provide substantive counterproposals to nearly all of UPTE’s proposals,” said UPTE-CWA Local 9119 President Dan Russell, an IT worker at UC Berkeley. “Instead of engaging with us, UC is silencing the patient and research advocates blowing the whistle on a staffing crisis that threatens patient care and critical research.”

The workers preparing to strike include physician assistants, optometrists, pharmacists, RN case managers, rehabilitation specialists, mental health clinicians, clinical lab scientists, staff research associates, IT analysts, and more—professionals who support UC students, provide world-class patient care at all UC hospitals and medical centers, and drive cutting-edge research on critical issues like cancer, food safety, and virology.

Read more about the crisis leading to this strike from the L.A. Times.

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This post originally appeared on cwa-union.org.