Keep UC Los Angeles rehab schedules flexible and protect quality care

University of California, Los Angeles management plans to force every outpatient rehab clinician onto a mandatory 4×10 schedule—four ten-hour days per week—starting Saturday, August 1, 2026, replacing the five eight-hour days they work now.¹

This change affects more than an entire unit of more than one hundred outpatient rehabilitation clinicians who care for UCLA patients: the audiologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech-language pathologists who run the outpatient clinics. Many have built their childcare, commutes, and family lives around the current schedule.²

More than 75% of UCLA’s outpatient rehab clinicians, including many who have volunteered to take on the 4×10 schedule themselves, have signed a letter asking management to keep the change voluntary.

Management says longer days will raise revenue. But mandatory ten-hour days across the board force experienced clinicians to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for their families. If the department cuts Saturday hours to make the new schedule work, patients lose access to care, too.

The mandate also threatens specialized care that patients can’t easily find elsewhere: pelvic floor and pediatric therapy, cochlear implant care, aural rehabilitation, and treatment for complex voice and airway disorders. These are skills no employer can quickly recruit or replace.³

¹ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule—UCLA Rehab Outpatient Services” (letter to the managers of UCLA Rehab Outpatient Services, April 22, 2026), 1.

² Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 5–8.

³ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 4.

Management’s scheduling change puts patients, working families, and the quality of care across UCLA’s clinics at risk: 

• Patients get worse care. Rehab work demands hours of focused listening, counseling, hands-on treatment, and careful documentation. Ten-hour days wear clinicians down, and fatigue leads to slower notes, delayed insurance authorizations, and a higher risk of clinical and billing errors—problems that directly affect patients.⁴

• The budget math doesn’t work. Longer days don’t create more revenue. If people keep canceling or missing appointments at the same rate, the clinic books no more billable visits than before. And if management hires extra staff to fill the new hours, payroll climbs without the revenue to match.⁵

• It exposes UCLA to legal risk. State and federal law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, treat a modified schedule as a basic accommodation for workers with disabilities or medical conditions, and they protect employees with caregiving duties from policies that single them out. A blanket ten-hour mandate would trigger a flood of accommodation requests and open the door to discrimination claims.⁶

• It punishes working parents. Most childcare runs eight hours a day. A ten-hour shift plus a commute can demand 11 to 13 hours of coverage—more than most providers offer. Parents of young children, new mothers, and employees who are still breastfeeding would carry the heaviest burden.⁷

• It drives skilled and experienced clinicians out the door. Forced long shifts burn people out and push them to leave. Replacing a specialist takes months of recruiting and training, and while that seat sits empty, patients wait longer, and the clinic loses the money the schedule was meant to save.⁹

When management forces this schedule, everyone loses: patients wait longer for care, working families get squeezed, and UCLA loses experienced clinicians, revenue, and the trust of its own staff.

⁴ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 1.

⁵ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 2.

⁶ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 2.

⁷ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 3.

⁸ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 3–4.

⁹ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 4.

We are asking UCLA management to keep scheduling flexible and to sit down with staff to work out the details before making any changes.

Here’s what needs to happen:

• Make the four-day, ten-hour schedule a choice, not a mandate. Let clinicians opt in.

• Keep the five-day, eight-hour schedule for those who need it.

• Honor the disability and medical accommodations the law requires, and give temporary exemptions to new parents and employees with infants.

• Meet with staff regularly to design solutions that fit each specialty and to track what actually improves care and access.

• Delay implementation until we have exhausted other avenues for addressing the root issues.¹⁰

¹⁰ Outpatient Rehab Staff, “Concerns Regarding Proposed Mandatory 4×10 Schedule,” 5.

University Professional and Technical Employees CWA Local 9119 (UPTE CWA 9119) is a labor union founded in 1990 by a group of employees who believed that workers across the University of California and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory would benefit from a union to safeguard and expand our rights. In 1993, UPTE members voted to affiliate with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a 700,000-member union in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the largest federation of unions in the United States, and in the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a North American national trade union center.

In 1994, 4,000 UC technical employees voted for UPTE representation. In 1996, 3,700 UC research professionals joined them; in 1997, 2,000 UC healthcare professionals followed suit. UPTE has grown to over 25,000 as UC’s Medical Centers have expanded, and we have added new titles to all of our bargaining units.

UPTE contracts also cover part-time, adjunct, and associate faculty, as well as counselors and librarians, at Butte College, College of the Sequoias, and Mt. San Jacinto College.