About 20,000 University of California employees gathered outside of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to begin a three day strike.
What are UC workers hoping to gain from the strike? Pay increases and better work pay.
The University Professional and Technical Employees Local 3299, or UPTE, are representing the UC workers amidst tense negotiations with the UC system.
AFSCME, or the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees joined the union’s strike as an active defendant of service workers.
Nurse case managers, clinical researchers, UC workers and more people are fighting for fair labor practices.
Alexis Alvarado works in the Clinical Research Unit in Hematology Oncology. She said they alerted UC about the staffing crisis. Many months passed, but they never addressed the issue.
Creating a crisis that she calls, “a danger to patient safety.”
“The reason that all of the UCs are on strike today and for the next two days is because this staffing crisis is affecting the entire University System all across the state,” said Alvarado. “This is harmful to patients all across the state of California. It’s really important that we’re here today as a result of the University of California’s unfair labor practices and to speak on these issues.”
Striking workers at UCLA, like Ricky Frazier, UCLA South Campus' Custodial Lead, believe that the school has more than enough money to resolve these issues and increase their wages.
“They said they didn’t have money to pay us, and they said that the raises they would give us in the hospital people would amount to less than $7 million but they spent $174 million so basically, that and the inequities of what people in office, administrators, chancellors, get housing and all that, and the people that work here, most of us start living check to check,” said Frazier.
He went to the strike in support of new workers. Although he is about to retire in September, he believes the fight is a worthy one.
“We have a just cause, which is to be be treated fairly,” said Frazier. “If you work on campus and you do other things, I don’t know if you’re under a union or not, but if you look and see the history of how the university administration have treated unions on this campus, not only this campus, all throughout the UCs, then you should have some understanding about union activity. If you don’t stand up to them and hold them accountable, then you won’t ever get anything.”
The workers and unions are working collaboratively to transform the eight months of bargaining into tangible change not only for themselves, but for the patients they serve.