The UPTE Update: SF council meeting; UCSD PAs secure equity increases; UCSF workers win on transit… and more!
Welcome to The UPTE Update, a monthly newsletter from University Professional and Technical Employees.
In this edition:
UPTE political endorsements for the general election
Ballots are starting to land for this year's general election on November 3rd!
Click here to see our union's endorsements
These candidates best align with UPTE's values and have taken steps to demonstrate that they will support us—and other working families—when given the opportunity.
It is especially important for public sector workers like us to make sure that we elect candidates who are committed to supporting public education, research, and healthcare—so we can continue to have the resources we need to deliver for our students, patients, and everyone who depends on our research.
You can see a list of key election dates on the California Secretary of State's or your county's registrar of voters website.
Hundreds of UPTE workplace and unit representatives convene in San Francisco
UPTE leaders from every UC campus gather in the Bay Area to celebrate recent wins, share skills, and continue strengthening our union.
Speakers addressed a variety of critical topics, including:
Fighting to protect public healthcare, research, and education.
Pressuring UC leadership to invest in safe staffing and fair pay.
Expanding our union from wall-to-wall, leaving no eligible UC professional unrepresented
The future of medicine once physicians join our union (watch here).
… and countless other organizing stories and skill workshops!
The relationships and power we continue building together will fuel our momentum as we approach the start of our contract campaign next year!
UCSD physician assistants secure equity increases
PAs across UC have historically been paid less than NPs, despite performing similar work.
Members at UCSD ran actions and shared stories to highlight these discrepancies, including a petition that received a 100% participation from PAs. Vast engagement and support from our physician colleagues empowered our bargaining team to negotiate a strong, new career ladder that:
Places 35% of the PA workforce at PA 3, the highest step in the new career ladder.
Raises wages by more than 20% for some.
Secures retroactive pay back to November 2025.
PAs at other UC Health campuses will continue enforcing their right to negotiate parity with NPs that thousands of UC healthcare professionals stood together to secure.
UCSF workers win on transit
Click here to see UCSF Clinical Research Coordinator, Peter Emanuel, speak on this win.
Commute time and costs are eating away at too many of our personal lives and paychecks. Following a UCSF "BayPass" pilot program that provided low-cost public transit to a small pool of workers, UPTE members at UCSF conducted a survey and found that:
73% of UPTE members spend at least an hour commuting to work.
10% spend more than 3 hours on their daily commute.
Some members living in surrounding counties were paying up to $500 per month in transit costs.
We gathered 1,000 petition signatures to demonstrate widespread demand for UCSF to expand free or low-cost transit options to all workers.
Our efforts prevailed! Building upon UAW 4811's transit benefits, we expanded BayPass to all UCSF workers on a sliding scale:
Any UCSF worker earning less than $73,000 per year is eligible for BayPass at no cost.
No UCSF worker will pay more than $45 per month to access this newly-secured benefit.
UCI Health nurse case managers strengthen worker and patient safety
Nurse case managers (NCM) at UCI Health Los Alamitos took action and wonimproved worker and patient safety.
NCMs were regularly caring for 40 to 50 patients at a time, despite vocalizing our concerns. Unsafe, unmanageable workload demands made it challenging for us to fully assess our patients and review their charts.
So, we organized:
All UPTE members in the department attended planning meetings and signed a petition.
Everyone stood together to deliver the petition to the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO).
All impacted members documented unsafe assignments.
UPTE members across UCI departments called the CNO to demand a meeting.
We secured a series of meetings with UCI Health leadership where all of our NCMs spoke out about the urgent need for more staff. Our collective action paid off!Here's what we secured:
Reduced the staffing ratio from 40-50 patients per NCM to 25 or less based on acuity.
Hired one additional FTE.
Obtained a commitment from UCI Health leadership to hire additional FTEs as needed to drop the staffing ratio to 20 patients per NCM based on acuity!
"We fought to address staffing because our first priority will always be patient care. It was dangerous and unsustainable. Organizing, being unified as a department, and taking collective action made the difference." — UCI Health NCMs Helen Huh, Roxanne Du, and Esmerelda Aguilar
UCSF social workers escalate demands for safer working conditions
UCSF social workers are still demanding change after 9 months of inaction by UCSF to address safety concerns following the on-the-job killing of our colleague, Alberto Rangel.
Despite audits and fines against UCSF, leadership has not acted sufficiently to address the core issues putting workers and patients at risk.
During a week of action, UPTE members showed up to a Giants game at Oracle Park to pass out flyers and zines highlighting UCSF's hypocrisy in sponsoring a ball game while at the same time understaffing their clinics.
The following day, more than a hundred members gathered with elected officials and community members for a vigil and action. State Senator Scott Wiener, Assemblymember Catherine Stefani, Assemblymember Matt Haney, every San Francisco City Supervisor, and the San Francisco Labor Council signed a letter to Chancellor Hawgood calling for urgent action.
We're keeping up the pressure until our UCSF social worker colleagues get the justice they deserve.
