May 1 Unfair Labor Practice Strike at UC

UPTE has agreed to return to the bargaining table on Thursday, May 8, and Friday, May 9, 2025, after receiving an improved proposal from UC on reclassification via email.

In its new proposal, UC has agreed to UPTE's proposal for an initial response to reclassification requests within ninety days, a significant improvement from having no timeline in our current contract and UC's initial proposal of 210 days. However, the University has not agreed to address the lack of clear and objective criteria or an enforceable appeals process.

Now, we need to keep up the pressure to let UC know we won't back down: UC needs to offer solutions to the staffing crisis, bargain in good faith, and end its unfair labor practices. RSVP for our May 1 ULP strike against UC’s unlawful hiring freeze today at upte.org/ucstrike.

Our unfair labor practice strike on April 1 forced UC executives to admit to California legislators in a March 31st communique, that "the strikes in November and February cost UC tens of millions of dollars each day to staff our medical centers and campuses." This is presumably in addition to lost revenues from things like cancelled surgeries, which are likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Why does UC continue to provoke costly, disruptive strikes at the same time that announces a hiring freeze based on supposed financial uncertainty? UC executives are panicked about the power and determination of our campaign and are saying whatever they can to try to slow us down.

This week, UPTE filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge over the University's imposition of the hiring freeze, which would further undermine patient care, research, and education across the state. UC knows what it has to do to avoid further strikes - end its unfair labor practices and bargain in good faith with all UPTE members over our proposals to end the recruitment and retention crisis.

On April 1, twenty thousand UPTE members at every University of California healthcare center, campus, and key laboratories participated in an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike. The strike was in response to UC’s decision to engage in a pattern of illegal behavior including continued attempts to unilaterally and unlawfully increase health insurance costs for some of the most vulnerable union members outside of the bargaining process. UC has also forced newly organized groups of workers into their own separate negotiation process, which has rendered the bargaining process hopelessly impractical and ineffective—a classic “divide-and-conquer” strategy that violates the law. 

“We believe UC’s priority should be the people of California and that they have an obligation to follow the law just like any other employer in our state. When they egregiously trample on our legal rights and protections, it emboldens other wealthy and powerful bullies to do the same to the rest of us—but we’re willing to fight to hold them accountable. It isn’t clear to us why UC has such a hard time respecting the rights of workers. What is clear is that when frontline workers speak out about the staffing crisis, UC is quick to dismiss it—while executives will report the same concerns internally,” said Amy Fletcher, a Staff Research Associate at UC Davis and a member of UPTE’s bargaining team. 

UPTE will be striking all UC locations on April 1 in response to UC’s unfair labor practices. 

During our contract negotiations, UC has refused to bargain over pay scales and other issues unique to the thousands of workers in non-union titles who joined UPTE in the past few years, most recently Research and Development Engineers. Many of these workers have been attempting to bargain separately for more than three years now.

UC wants every new title to keep being stuck in a separate bargaining process forever—in short, an illegal “divide-and-conquer” tactic that ultimately UC could extend to all of us simply by moving us to non-union titles. 

UC also imposed higher healthcare premiums during bargaining for many workers—unilaterally, with no prior notice, even though UC promised that it would not increase premiums while it was bargaining with us. 

Be sure to RSVP now at upte.org/ucstrike and plan to join us on the picket lines on April 1.

February’s strike was not just the largest in UPTE's history - it was the first time UPTE members had shut UC down statewide on our own.

The sea of blue formed by thousands and thousands of UPTE members marching across the state is the strongest and clearest rebuttal of UC's claim that "there is no crisis of recruitment and retention" and their attempt to silence frontline workers.

We hope UC has heard us and is prepared to work with us rather than continuing on the current course of violating the law by committing unfair labor practices. If they do not, we know what we have to do.

We are scheduling hundreds of meetings across the state in the next 2-3 weeks to debrief the strike and discuss how we make our next strike even stronger, if that becomes necessary.

Our statewide strike vote has closed, and today, UPTE is announcing a statewide strike from February 26 to 28, 2025, in response to UC's ongoing unfair labor practices.You can check out our announcement in the Los Angeles Times.

Four times as many UPTE members participated this time compared to our last statewide strike vote in 2018, voting to authorize the strike by 98%. Instead of working together to address the recruitment and retention crisis, UC is attempting to silence workers for speaking out for our patients, research, and students. 

UC has enacted new rules to limit our ability to advocate for ourselves and interfered with our rights by unilaterally forcing individuals to come to work during our November unfair practice strike at UCSF. With public healthcare, research, and education under attack from the federal government, it is more important than ever that we defend our rights to advocate for our professions.

Whether UC attempts to stop us from speaking up for patient care, students, or the public—or continues bargaining in bad faith—it is up to us to take action to hold them accountable. Don't just stay home from work; our patients, research, and students are counting on us.

Over the last year, the University of California has imposed draconian rules that attempt to stop workers from advocating on behalf of their patients, research, and students.

This January, UPTE filed a 490-page charge with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), forcefully challenging dozens of UC’s new rules. These repressive policies set unconscionable limits on both employee and union speech, running counter to well-established protections under state and federal law. The Public Employee Relations Board is responsible for safeguarding the collective bargaining statutes that govern employees of California’s universities and other public institutions across the state.

Among UC’s many repressive measures, UC San Francisco and UC Davis now ban a lone leafletter from venturing closer than fifty feet from any door, while UC Merced forces every picketer or leafletter to remain thirty feet away from walkways, roadways, or doors. Our charge highlights that in 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a thirty-five-foot buffer zone around doorways, underscoring the outrageous nature of UC’s even more extreme demands.

On January 22, more than fifty UPTE members from across the state gathered in Sacramento to inform state legislators about the dire state of negotiations with the University of California.

We met with eighty-three offices, including California State Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, the Majority Leader of the California State Assembly, as well as California State Superintendent of Public Instruction and UC Regent Tony Thurmond, who expressed their strong support for our efforts.

Whether you attended our first official Lobby Day last week in person or not, I wanted to share our recap video of the event. Watch and share it on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter.

A number of legislators have already signed on to a letter demanding that UC President Michael V. Drake work with us to address the recruitment and retention crisis. We expect many more to do so in the coming weeks.

Given new threats to healthcare and research in the public interest from the federal government, we hope that UC will take this opportunity to begin working with us to advocate for our patients, research, and students—rather than continuing to waste precious time and resources on their bad faith bargaining and unfair labor practices.

Just in case you didn't hear the exciting news: Between Thursday, January 23, and today, Monday, January 27, 2025, nearly three-fourths of University Professional and Technical Employees CWA Local 9119 (UPTE CWA 9119) members cast their ballots to ratify our new contract with Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.

We're proud that UPTE members at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory cast a ballot, voting overwhelmingly yes—over ninety-eight percent—to ratify a strong contract at the federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California. As so many members voted so quickly and so resolutely, your bargaining team has decided to close the contract ratification vote, ratify the contract, and inform lab management of our decision.

Remember, it's our collective strength that helped us achieve our new contract. Together, we can continue building a stronger, more inclusive union representing the goals and priorities of every UPTE member at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. If you're invested enough to want a career at Lawrence Livermore Lab, you have a stake in making it the best possible workplace. Livermore Lab belongs to us as much as—no, even more than—it does to management.