Thousands of UC employees vote to strike amid federal funding threats

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.”