One of my worst fears came true earlier this year. UC laid me off from my job as a systems administrator out of the blue, leaving my wife and me scrambling. It was a complete shock—I was going to lose my job of twenty-plus years in two months. What about our kids? Our mortgage? Food, healthcare, retirement?

Fortunately, that's not the end of my story. As soon as I got my layoff notice, I contacted my organizer. We began fighting my layoff immediately, and eventually, we won. After months of bracing for the worst, I was back to work just weeks after my "final" day. This is the power of being willing and able to stand up against unjust decisions in the workplace. This is the power of having and enforcing a strong contract with layoff protections. This is the power of our union.

UC's reasoning for my layoff was budget concerns. The funding sources for our department were either being held up somewhere or had been cut at the federal level. Yet, in the months-long stretch between when I received my layoff notice and my last day, I found out that both funding sources were reinstated.

Crisis over, right? Wrong. UC was still planning to lay me off. Without UPTE, I would have lost my job without recourse, even though I knew there was no logic behind the decision.

As an Animal Health Technician 3 at UC Davis’ Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH)—ranked the country’s top animal hospital—I am proud of the world‑class care our teams strive to provide. Yet you and I both know reputation alone doesn’t keep patients safe. Regional specialty and emergency clinics now pay up to $15 more per hour than UC Davis, and chronic understaffing means two techs can be responsible for more than sixty ICU patients. Emergencies are turned away, preventable tragedies occur, and the stress is driving talented colleagues out the door.

Sound familiar? Whether you’re at UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Riverside, or any other campus‑based clinic, many of us face the same retention, recruitment, and workload crises. That’s why I’m writing to share what we achieved together in Davis last week.

On Tuesday, July 29, animal health technicians, animal technologists, and other UPTE-represented workers at UC Davis joined an informational picket outside the School of Veterinary Medicine to demand safe staffing.

Media response was immediate: FOX40, The Sacramento Bee, The Davis Enterprise, and others amplified our call that safe staffing saves animal lives.

The Medi-Cal Behavioral Health Student Loan Repayment Program is a state-run program designed to support behavioral health professionals with student loan debt. This loan repayment program is only for behavioral health professionals with educational debt who commit to serving two to four years in Medi-Cal safety net settings such as FQHCs, Community Mental Health Centers, Rural Health Clinics, or hospitals/behavioral health sites with 40%+ Medicaid/uninsured population. Applications are due by August 15, 2025, at 3:00 p.m.

Eligible applicants include licensed prescribing and non-prescribing practitioners, associate-level pre-licensure providers, and non-licensed professionals, and they must provide qualifying services under the California Medicaid State Plan. 

Please note that this program is administered entirely by the State of California, not UPTE. Our role is simply to share this opportunity with you. UPTE is not involved in application decisions, approvals, or enforcement of the program's requirements. If you have questions about the program or your eligibility, we encourage you to contact the state directly through the program's website.

UPTE met with UC on July 8 and 9, where UC provided "a new package of proposals" that includes no raises in 2028, no limits on increases to healthcare costs, no increased time off, and no right to vacant positions prior to layoff.

The most meaningful improvement was UC agreeing to UPTE's proposal to expand preferential rehire rights from just someone's home campus (e.g., UCSF) to all UC campuses and extend recall and rehire rights for HX unit members to three years for those with more than ten years of service (matching the RX & TX bargaining units). However, UC proposed reducing recall and rehire rights for those at Berkeley Lab (LBNL) from three years to one year, without providing an explanation.

Check out a summary of UPTE's proposals compared to UC's here.

This is all two months after our last bargaining session, demonstrating that UC is still not taking the ongoing crisis of recruitment and retention seriously. We have now missed a step increase and an across-the-board raise due to UC's stalling and unfair labor practices.

As UC sows confusion and misinformation about supposed 'financial constraints' while spending tens of billions on expansion and new construction, it is more important than ever that we hold the line on these issues.

On June 23rd, UC San Diego Health announced the layoff of 230 employees, including a handful of UPTE-represented workers. Immediately following the announcement, UPTE sprang into action.

With little notice, over 200 members attended an emergency meeting in La Jolla and received widespread media coverage that made it clear to UCSD leadership that UPTE members would not sit by quietly. UPTE workplace and unit representatives talked to their coworkers and discussed a strike if UCSD refused to work with us.

Thanks to our powerful presence in the past three strikes, UCSD recognized our strength and has committed to resolving a majority of the UPTE layoffs. We are continuing to fight every layoff and will not stop until every option has been exhausted.

As a result of this progress, UPTE will not be striking on July 22nd. We stand in solidarity with AFSCME in their fight against layoffs and ask all members to show support by wearing solidarity stickers and joining their picket lines during breaks. AFSCME was hit with 103 layoffs, roles essential to hospital operations and patient care, and we will stand beside them in their fight.

As you may have heard, UC San Diego and UC San Francisco announced significant, hospital-wide layoffs last week, with top hospital leadership demanding cuts of 1.5% and 1% of payroll across the board.

Though these cuts were supposedly due to financial necessity, we know that these hospitals are sitting on billions of dollars in reserves—and that these layoffs are likely related to a desire to best position the hospitals to finance even further expansion. UCSF and UC San Diego each have ongoing and planned capital expansion projects totaling more than $10 billion.

Laying off frontline staff to finance expansion projects, amidst a well-documented crisis of short staffing, is unacceptable and puts patient care, research, and education at risk.

That's why UPTE's Unit Representatives at both campuses sprang into action, calling emergency meetings and organizing mass meetings to protest the layoffs, and joining pickets in solidarity with AFSCME and CNA workers who are also facing layoffs. UPTE members spoke to the press about the impacts of layoffs on patient care and operations, garnering important coverage across the state, including in the San Francisco Chronicle and 10News – ABC San Diego KGTV.

Thanks to our quick response, some layoffs have already been rescinded, and we are continuing to build pressure to rescind the rest.

On, Tuesday, July 8, UPTE members and allies rallied outside the School of Social Ecology to warn UC Irvine administrators that cutting the very people who keep classrooms, laboratories, and clinics running hurts everyone—students, faculty, and the broader public alike.

UC’s public mission is to educate the next generation, drive groundbreaking research, and serve our communities. When UC shows the last remaining help-desk technician in the School of Social Ecology the door, that mission grinds to a halt:

• Students lose a lifeline. Without prompt tech support, laptops remain unconfigured and vital software goes uninstalled, threatening first-week instruction and derailing senior capstone projects.

• Faculty research stalls. Broken lab computers delay grant-funded experiments and slow the discoveries that improve our communities’ health, environment, and economy.

• Community partnerships suffer. Agencies that depend on timely data analysis and research collaborations can’t proceed when equipment sits idle.

• Security risks multiply. Devices piled up in an unsecured office violate UC information-security standards, putting sensitive data at risk.

Tuesday, July 8, and Wednesday, July 9, will be our 13th bargaining session, and UC is refusing to provide a bargaining location at either UC Berkeley or UC San Francisco. We are looking into alternative locations in the Bay Area.

After more than a year of bargaining, why is UC not doing its part to reach a fair agreement that addresses the recruitment and retention crisis?

The most recent state budget has restored UC's expected fundingcompletely—and thus far, no major federal funding cuts have been made. Yet UC continues to use uncertainty as an excuse to dig in their heels on the same unfair proposals they made a year ago.

We hope that incoming UC President James B. Milliken will recognize that our demands are reasonable and that now is the time to settle a contract that will end the recruitment and retention crisis.

Under President Milliken's leadership at the City University of New York, workers started their careers with eight more days off per year (sick, vacation, and holidays combined) than UPTE members do, and have 15 more days off per year than we do after ten years of service. They also receive up to four days of bereavement leave per year, which does not count against their sick leave accruals.

However, UC has thus far refused any increase in paid time off—even though other UC employees already receive up to nine days more off per year than we do.

Over the past two weeks, UPTE members have been mobilizing to protect our patients, students, and the communities we serve. UCLA members mobilized to provide security for undocumented students, also known as DREAMers, during graduation. Meanwhile, UC Irvine members held an emergency town hall in response to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staging at one of UC's new hospitals. Additionally, members across the state joined "No Kings" protests on Saturday.

As ICE raids continue to threaten our workplaces and communities, we want to make sure you know your rights so that you can protect your co-workers, friends, students, patients, and family.

Here is a list of immigration resources compiled by the UCLA Labor Center, including regional emergency hotlines.

Please reach out to your UPTE Organizer or Unit Representative immediately if you are aware of ICE activity that may pose a threat to your co-workers or those who depend on us.

We are proud to see our fellow UPTE members stand together and show the courage to advocate for others in this moment.

In the labor movement, we often talk about the importance of solidarity: that an injury to one worker is an injury to all workers.

We have built incredible power and solidarity within our union and with other UC workers as we have fought to reset UC's priorities. 

We will stay true to those values as the federal government terrorizes our communities and assaults union leaders like SEIU California and United Service Workers West President David Huerta, who stand with them.

What message will we send if we do not stand up and speak out when they attack our immigrant union siblings, family members, and neighbors?

This is not about Democrats and Republicans: this is about workers sending a message to every politician that we have one another's backs—that we will not allow other workers to be silenced or targeted for speaking out. 

This is about recognizing that immigrants are not the reason that working people are struggling: it is the billionaires who support politicians from both parties.

In 2013 and 2019, AFSCME, CNA, and UPTE stuck together and struck together to force UC to back down on its plans to force our newly-hired members to work five years longer for the same pension benefits as current employees. 

The last few years have seen UC pass increasing portions of healthcare costs onto non-union workers—which is why UPTE members pay up to $224 less per month.

Now, UC wants to remove the caps and impose up to $150/month for specialty pharmaceuticals.

That's why an even broader coalition of UC unions is saying "hell no!" to UC's attempts to push healthcare costs onto workers.

Click here to sign the petition and let UC know you're going to stand with our AFSCME, AFT, CNA, SEIU-CIR, Teamsters, and UAW colleagues to protect affordable healthcare at UC.

UC has yet to propose bargaining dates for our next session, after saying they were unavailable for the dates that UPTE proposed in early June.

UC may not be showing urgency to get bargaining done, but we feel the urgency every day that the recruitment and retention crisis worsens—and need to use that to keep our co-workers engaged.

As we prepare to keep building pressure through the next phase of our contract campaign, we continue to win fights at the departmental level thanks to the power we have continued to build over the past three years.

Earlier this month, 22 UC Davis Social Workers at Jail Psychological Services (JPS), serving two jails in Sacramento, won a multi-year fight for fair re-classification with the support of UC Davis Co-Chair and Unit Representative Sonya Mogilner.

Lack of career progression contributes to an 80% annual turnover rate at JPS. This is a major victory over UC's pattern of under-classifying healthcare workers who treat vulnerable patient populations.

This year, University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) will have a joint election process to elect two separate delegations, with one to attend the UPTE Convention and the other to attend the Communications Workers of America (CWA) National Convention.

All statewide members in good standing will be eligible to vote in the CWA Delegate Election. For chapters that will not have a contested UPTE delegate election, UPTE members will be asked only to vote for the CWA Convention delegates. This election will be held electronically and managed by ElectionBuddy.

The voting period will open on Monday, June 2, and close on Monday, June 9, 2025.

If you cannot vote online or access email, you may email your request for a mail-in ballot to elections@upte.org by Friday, May 30, 2025.

ElectionBuddy will share voting instructions and ballots via email on the morning of June 2.

It was incredible to see thousands of UPTE members striking in response to UC's illegal hiring freeze on May Day. We marched alongside hundreds of others from unions and community groups protesting attacks on workers' rights. As our numbers and support grow strike after strike, UC knows that we are not backing down in our fight for our patients, research, and students.

Click below for some highlights of our great press coverage:

• Labor Notes: May Day Rallies Confront Billionaire Assaults

• Sacramento Bee: UC workers strike over hiring freeze but plan to return to bargaining table

• KQED: Bay Area Workers Defend Labor, Protest Trump on May Day

• KPBS: UC San Diego Health workers strike on International Workers' Day

In July, we will miss our first across-the-board increase. How many more of our colleagues will leave if we allow UC to continue to drag out these negotiations?

Our patients, our research, and our students are counting on us to keep up the fight.

UPTE will be striking at all UC locations on Thursday, May 1, 2025 in response to UC's unfair labor practices. Learn more at upte.org/ucstrike.

On March 19, UC publicly announced a hiring freeze and has since implemented it at campuses without providing UPTE notice, let alone an opportunity to bargain over the freeze or its effects on our members—as it is legally required to do now that our contracts have expired.

Some campuses even apply the freeze to decisions about existing employees, such as reclassifications, promotions, equity increases, and conversion of term-limited employees to career employees.

After UPTE submitted a cease and desist and demand to bargain, the University explicitly refused to undo the hiring freeze so we could bargain. UC has also committed additional unfair practices like denying pension credit to workers at the hospitals it has acquired without bargaining, leaving these new workers behind, even as UC expands its market share. 

This is all despite UC's holding more than $26 billion in liquid capital and a judge issuing a permanent stay on threatened across-the-board cuts to indirect cost reimbursements for research grants.

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.