The Brief

Thousands of University of California healthcare, research and technical employees have voted to authorize their union to call a strike, potentially disrupting hospitals and research facilities statewide as the federal government threatens cuts to the university’s funding.

The vote, which concluded Thursday, passed with 98% support, according to a Friday press release from the University Professional and Technical Employees Local 9119, which represents more than 20,000 UC employees. The union said the strike has been scheduled for Feb. 26 to 28 and will involve members across all UC campuses.

It represents the latest escalation in a conflict over staffing levels and compensation that sparked a two-day work stoppage at UC San Francisco in November. Also on Friday, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents more than 37,000 UC patient care and service workers, announced a strike at all UC campuses and five medical centers from Feb. 26–27.

Contract negotiations between UPTE and UC, the state’s third-largest employer, began eight months ago. However, both parties remain far apart on the union’s goal of fixing a recruitment and retention crisis that is harming patients, research and students, according to Dan Russell, UPTE’s president and lead negotiator.

“We don’t want to have to strike. But we’re also not going to let this crisis continue to drag out,” said Russell, a business technology support analyst at UC Berkeley. “We hear these stories from almost every group of workers, whether it’s pay is too low, people are leaving to go to Kaiser or people just feeling disaffected.”

Physician assistants, mental health clinicians, laboratory scientists, IT workers and other UC employees are fed up with the lack of progress, he added. The union declared an impasse on Jan. 3, and the two parties met with mediators later in the month.

UC has proposed wage increases for UPTE-represented employees of 5% starting in July, 3% in 2026 and 3% in 2027. The university also offered to streamline some of its career growth mechanisms and expand access to vacation time.

A spokesperson for the university called the union’s talk of preparing for a work stoppage “disheartening.”

“The university has been and remains ready to settle these contracts: we have offered UPTE what it has asked for,” Heather Hansen, a spokesperson with the UC Office of the President, said in a statement. “In the event of a strike, the University is prepared to make every effort to ensure the critical operations of the University system, which includes patient care, continue at a level of excellence UC patients, students, faculty and staff expect.”

UPTE and UC have accused each other of engaging in bad-faith bargaining on key issues. The union charged the university with unfair labor practices before the California Public Employment Relations Board, including for allegedly failing to provide job vacancy and financial data to assess the extent of staffing issues, increasing employee health care costs without negotiating over the changes and limiting worker and union speech.

Hansen told KQED last October that the university was working to produce information on vacancy rates and other data. But Russell said the union has yet to receive that information.

The labor standoff comes as a federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked this week the National Institutes of Health from reducing funding that supports biomedical and public health research at universities, after California and 21 other states sued. The NIH is the largest funder of UC research, and the university said it could lose hundreds of millions of dollars per year, leading to layoffs and disruptions to life-saving research. A hearing in the case is set for Feb. 21.

The union was relieved the proposed NIH funding cuts were paused, Russell said, though he noted that reductions would represent a relatively small fraction of the $51.4 billion budget for UC in 2023–24.

John Logan, who chairs the labor and employment studies department at San Francisco State University, said UC is bracing for challenges with the Trump administration over various issues that could impact federal funding, including policies affecting transgender, LGBTQ and undocumented students, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion measures.

Financial uncertainty under the Trump administration could make UC administrators reluctant to give out generous multi-year labor deals. However, the timing of a large, disruptive walkout could also be disastrous, he added.

“A strike which would cause major disruptions — would be the absolute last thing that university administrators would want at this time when it is trying to protect its funding and talk about the value of medical research at places like UCSF and UC San Diego,” Logan said. “The university, while being very concerned about the potential financial implications of what the Trump administration is trying to do, should also be concerned about its public image.”

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

)

Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.