AFSCME is prepared to fight for rights
I have written this letter in response to the ongoing stalled negotiations between the Patient Care Tech Union (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299) and University of California system.
Our union has been preparing for seven years to be at this current point in our negotiation process and is not going to back down from the UC system anymore. We are standing up for what is right: fair market wages and the negotiating power to not allow the UC to raise employee costs whenever they want.
We are 11,000 strong within the UC system. We’ve been kept in the dark and misinformed about our union and our rights as UC employees for too long.
Today, we are without a contract as current negotiations are at an impasse after five months of bargaining. The state has officially declared that further negotiations will not produce an agreement without mediation. We are close to second impasse if mediation fails to get both sides to agree on a contract. That would lead to a strike vote.
We are serious and ready to see this fight to the end. UC management is playing its game and refusing our demands because it thinks we will not go as far as a strike because we have not done so in the past.
It is a new era for PCTs, and today we are better informed and are willing to unite for the betterment of all human beings within the UC system.
David M. Page, RRT
UCSD respiratory care practitioner