2,100 UC tech workers launch the largest tech organizing drive in U.S. history

More than 2,100 tech workers at the University of California have built majority support to join UPTE, making it the largest tech organizing drive in United States history. We’ve petitioned the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to certify our union.

These workers keep California’s public university running: they power the systems behind patient care at UC’s medical centers, support research scientists across the state rely on, and build the tools that serve hundreds of thousands of students. When they win a real voice on the job, UC serves the public better.

This victory advances a broader fight to defend and expand public healthcare, research, and education in California. Strong unions retain experienced staff, cut turnover, and hold management accountable at an institution that belongs to the public. UPTE keeps organizing: pushing every remaining non-union tech title at UC to join our union, and fighting to win the fair pay, layoff protections, affordable healthcare, and retirement benefits that keep skilled workers serving California.

This UPTE (University Professional and Technical Employees) May 2026 newsletter highlights several recent union victories and ongoing efforts. The lead story describes how we successfully reversed layoffs of eight healthcare quality improvement specialists at UCI Health by rallying media attention and threatening legal action, ultimately recovering ten total positions. A second story covers how a mental health therapist at the CAARE Center in East Sacramento, facing the sudden loss of a 20-year Medi-Cal contract, worked with UPTE to mobilize roughly 1,000 calls to Sacramento supervisors, resulting in the clinic’s funding being restored. A third story recounts how a UC Davis research engineer, improperly let go during a hiring freeze, was converted to a career position with back pay through UPTE’s contract enforcement efforts. The newsletter also notes the union broader priorities—including affordable housing, childcare, and immigrant protections—and closes with a May Day tribute to the labor movement’s history, celebrating UPTE members’ statewide actions under the banner “workers over billionaires.”

As healthcare professionals and research and technical staff at the University of California, we share a bond with everyone who has committed to caring for the sick, advocating for students, and serving the public. The murder of Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs intensive care unit nurse who committed his life to caring for veterans, strikes us deeply. There are few things more horrific than seeing a healthcare professional, moved by his duty to care for others, murdered by our own government.

UPTE stands with labor unions across the United States in denouncing the ongoing brutal attacks on immigrants and native born alike, both in Minneapolis, here in California, and across the country.

We demand justice for Alex Pretti, Renée Good, Keith Porter Jr., and others across the country whose families have been separated or shattered by federally sanctioned cruelty. We will stand with our colleagues to continue fighting not only for our patients and for science and research, but also to bring about a just and humane society, not one ruled by hate and fear.

Nearly three months after a patient stabbed and killed our coworker and UPTE member Alberto Rangel, more than two hundred UPTE members and supporters came together to deliver a clear message: UC must act to make sure this never happens again.

According to UPTE’s workplace safety survey, 90% of UCSF social workers have experienced some type of threat, assault, or intimidation on the job, whether physical, sexual, or verbal. Another 81% said they feel unsafe at work at least once a month, and many feel unsafe every day. 90% said they had reported feeling unsafe at work to management at least once.

After the rally, we brought our demands straight to UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood's office. He still has not met with us to address our demands for safety and transparency.

Workers laid out common-sense demands: stronger safety protocols, lower caseloads, adequate staffing, and an end to the two-tier system that pays campus outpatient social workers about 33% less than hospital-based coworkers, while giving them fewer resources and more strain.

We want to update you on our demands for safety and transparency at San Francisco Department of Public Health facilities and across UC San Francisco. First, we request that you complete UPTE's confidential UCSF Workplace Safety Survey to help strengthen worker- and patient-centered safety improvements. Second, we recently met with Daniel Tsai, the director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH), and UC leadership to share staff feedback and clarify implementation expectations.

UPTE is launching this confidential survey to better understand how UCSF staff in outpatient behavioral health settings have faced unsafe working conditions. As we advocate for worker- and patient-centered models for safety improvements, collecting data on prior safety incidents and how management handled them will be extremely valuable. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey here.

Following direct advocacy by staff at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center's HIV Clinic at Ward 86, UPTE social workers met with DPH Director Daniel Tsai alongside UC labor leadership. Workers emphasized that safety measures in DPH settings must apply equally to all UC workers, and Director Tsai committed to change across DPH-operated sites.

This year was a huge year for UPTE, thanks to the hard work of our members, leaders, and staff across the state. We ended 2025 with a massive contract victory at the University of California after starting it with one at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. 

All of this despite the political headwinds turning strongly against public healthcare, education, and research. 

Over the course of the year, we brought more than 2,500 workers back into UPTE after UC had excluded their titles from representation for years. When we return in 2026, we will continue organizing in our workplaces: for safety protocols, for safe staffing, for fair pay, and more. 

We will also have to step up our fights with other workers to defend and expand public research, healthcare, and education.

In 2025 we fought and we won. I look forward to fighting together and winning with all of you in 2026 and beyond. I hope you relax and enjoy the winter holidays with loved ones, knowing that years of hard work have paid off. 

In Solidarity,

Dan Russell
UPTE President

I was shocked and horrified by the stabbing of a valued member, colleague, and friend, while on the job at the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Our hearts are with the victim’s family, coworkers, and all those affected by this tragedy.

No one should have to fear for their safety at work, especially inside one of the region’s leading trauma centers. Our members have long sounded the alarm about unsafe conditions and chronic understaffing that put them at risk every day, as they serve as the social workers and behavioral health clinicians on the front lines of the city's mental health crisis.

We demand, expect, and will participate in a full and detailed investigation of this incident, and will continue to remain in close contact with hospital leadership, city officials and all relevant agencies as we seek answers and continue to fight for reliable and consistent safety protocols, adequate staffing, and the resources clinicians need to care for their patients and clients.

We will not rest until every worker can go to work knowing they will come home safely.

Nearly 12,000 members participated in our ratification vote, with 98% voting in favor of ratification. Our ratification vote means our new contract terms with the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are effective immediately.

Our new contract is an important foundation for the work we still have to do: addressing profession and department-specific issues, welcoming workers who work alongside us—but who UC has moved into non-union titles—back into our union, and preparing to take on other issues important to our members, both inside and outside of UC.

In 2025 alone, more than 2,000 non-union workers won UPTE representation—with thousands more working to win representation right now! This work is crucial to building our strength and density for future fights.

I hope we are all able to rest and enjoy the beginning of the holiday season with the security this contract provides. Congratulations to us all!

I’m an Animal Health Technician at UCSF who has faced significant financial struggles while pouring my heart into my work. At the beginning of our journey for a new contract, my goal was to show UC that their undervalued staff were so much more than just numbers on a badge—UPTE workers are the strong foundation on which patient care, research, and education are built.

That’s why I’m proud to vote YES on our tentative agreement, and why I am writing today to ask you to join me at upte.org/vote.

I’ve told my story countless times over the last many months, and I’ve seen how my experience resonates with colleagues; perhaps their family members would benefit from our neurodegenerative disease research, or maybe because they, too, were single parents attempting to make ends meet while the cost of living soared.

Our tentative agreement represents significant progress in resetting UC's priorities and making our work more sustainable. The year-to-year raises, equity pool adjustments, and our triumph on enforcing a $25 minimum across all of our job titles will be transformative for my colleagues who, like me, have long been overlooked by UC. This contract is proof positive that when we fight, we win.

Unfortunately, the 2026 Blue & Gold and Kaiser premiums displayed in UC's Open Enrollment and Alex tools are inaccurate—they are based on UC's previous proposals at the bargaining table and UC has informed us that they are unable to update them at this point.

Our actual premiums for 2026 Blue & Gold and Kaiser plans based on our Tentative Agreement (TA) are available here. Our rates are lower for most members—but slightly higher for some—because we won subsidies that keep costs affordable for everyone; no matter how much you make or who you insure.

You can still make changes to your Open Enrollment choices through November 21st.

If you haven't already, review the other wins in our TA and vote to ratify the TA. Nearly 7,000 members voted on the first day! The TA will only become our contract if more members vote YES than NO.

UPTE and the University of California have reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) after the mediator brought us back into communications following days of mediation.

This is a major victory for UPTE members across the University of California system and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: delivering significant pay increases over four years, predictable and progressive caps on healthcare premium increases, and improvements in work-life balance, career progression, and job security.

This would not have been possible without the perseverance and commitment of thousands of UPTE members and more than one thousand unit and workplace representatives, who helped develop our platform and advocate for our patients, research, and students over the course of a two-year fight that included seven days on strike.

You can find details about the tentative agreement at upte.org/summary and cast your ballot at upte.org/vote before our ratification vote ends on November 20.

When UCLA took over the West Valley Medical Center (formerly West Hills Hospital) last year, they made a lot of promises. One of them was that per diem workers would not lose their current pay rate or seniority in the transition.

However, when some per diem workers received their first UCLA paycheck, they were shocked to discover their pay had plummeted. This was not what was promised. 

Turns out, UCLA had made a mistake, and in true UC fashion, they elected to simply do nothing about it. No matter their (documented!) promises to per diem employees or the impact the drastically lower pay rate would have on recruitment and retention. As far as management was concerned, per diem workers just had to deal with it.

But UPTE members decided that they, in fact, did not have to deal with it. They led the charge in forcing UC to correct their error and pay them what they were owed. As a result, per diem workers will receive the pay they were promised, as well as backpay dated to when UCLA took over their hospital in March 2024—which, for some workers, totals to thousands of dollars.