Gloves come off as employees launch strikes at medical centers

DAVIS — The University of California and its largest employee union, AFSCME Local 3299, both came out throwing punches Tuesday morning as the university’s lowest-paid workers hit the picket line for the second time in six months to push for better wage increases and job security.

Almost 200 employees started the day picketing at Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center early Tuesday morning, and other employees protested at UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC San Francisco medical centers in a strike that will last from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Thursday. As the strike proceeds, Sacramento motorists and UCD patients should expect occasional traffic delays along Stockton Boulevard between V Street and Second Avenue.

Monica De Leon, the vice president of AFSCME Local 3299’s patient-care technical unit, said in a news release that the current UC leaders are “destroying what were once career pathways to the middle-class for our state’s diverse population.”

UC spokesperson Claire Doan, in a statement released Tuesday, described the union’s stance as combative, harmful and ineffective. Doan’s comments were a departure for university leaders, who until now have declined to go toe-to-toe with the union in the media.

"Union leaders certainly have the right to express — even scream — their opinions, but the way to a deal is at the negotiating table, not on the picket lines,” Doan said. “For a year AFSCME leaders have refused to budge on their unreasonable demand of a 36 percent raise over four years for patient-care workers. That is nearly triple what other university employees have received and clearly unrealistic for a taxpayer-funded institution like UC.”

AFSCME negotiators are seeking pay raises totaling 8 percent annually over a four-year contract for 15,000 employees such as respiratory therapists, medical transcribers and phlebotomists in its patient-care unit and for 9,000 members of its service unit, which includes building food service workers, security guards and custodians. The university has offered 3 percent annual wage increases, a proposal that registered nurses in the California Nurses Association approved late last month. Even as AFSCME chides the UC over its proposed salary increases, Doan said, union leadership has quietly moved to take a larger portion of their members’ paychecks, increasing the monthly dues cap in January to $120 from $78.

UC Davis officials began making a public case for their proposed pay raises, using detailed statements on how its average annual salaries compare with market wages. On average, they said, phlebotomists make 7 percent above the market, food service workers, 17 percent over market; and senior custodians, 5 percent above market. UCD also provided examples of the average annual salaries it pays: $101,951 for respiratory therapists, $56,703 for phlebotomists, $39,925 for senior custodians and $39,219 for food service workers.

AFSCME leadership has said its membership has shared the least in the financial success of the campuses and medical centers they serve. They continued to decry the UC’s outsourcing of jobs, saying the trend has worsened income, racial, and gender inequality in its medical centers and campuses. They point to an August 2017 report from the California State Auditor that found the University of California, Davis, and other UC campuses have used outsourcing to minimize hiring new employees.

The auditor found that many contractors also paid far below the university minimum wage and did not offer comparable benefits. Through outsourcing, AFSCME leaders said, the university is basically helping to lower the prevailing market wages used as a barometer for how well AFSCME members and other employees are paid.

“We’ve bargained in good faith for over a year to address outsourcing at UC because it creates unequal and insecure circumstances that workers must struggle with every day,” said AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger. “Instead of joining us in an effort to arrest these alarming trends, UC has insisted on deepening them — leaving workers no option but to strike.”