The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 has called off a statewide strike, originally planned for June 4-5, that would have affected about 20,000 University of California service workers and patient-care technical employees.
Union president Lakesha Harrison said the Public Employee Relations Board stepped in to prevent the strike. The university asked that the workers return to the bargaining table to review a new offer.
“UC claimed that we had some essential classifications that they could not replace … we were too essential to the university to strike and that the university had more to offer us,” Harrison said.
Though AFSCME and the university are currently in mediation to negotiate better wages, Harrison said that if the university is not able to deliver a fair contract, the workers will strike at a later date.
But Nicole Savickas, a coordinator for Human Resources and Labor Relations at the UC Office of the President, said part of the problem comes from AFSCME’s insistence for similar wage increases for patient-care technical and service employees, though funding for the two groups comes from different places.
Savickas said that while the funds for patient-care technical employees come from hospital revenue, a much higher percentage of wages for service employees come from the state, making wage increases more difficult.
“We’re bargaining for two separate bargaining units: our patient-care technical employees and our service employees. … Patient-care technical workers are not funded by the state at all,” Savickas said.
She added that while the UC has previously been able to offer across-the-board wage increases of 4 to 15 percent to patient-care technical employees in the first contract year alone, state funding does not allow such increases for service employees.
“Increases for service employees have been from 2 to 13 percent … but they’re not across-the-board increases,” Savickas said.
But Harrison said that the problem lies with the UC’s priorities, not a lack of resources.
“This is not about resources at all. Only 8.6 percent of the workforce is state-funded. … The UC said that they have the money, but it would be irresponsible to spend it on the workers,” Harrison said.
She said that massive executive raises and bonuses take the priority away from the workers, many of whom qualify for government aid.
“They’re not making the workers a priority. … They’re not making the patients a priority, and they’re not making the students a priority; they’re making the executives a priority,” Harrison said.
Harrison added that many hospitals, such as Kaiser Permanente, and community colleges in the area pay market-competitive wages.
“We basically just want equal pay for equal work. Almost every classification that we represent is 25 percent below that classification in another hospital,” Harrison said.
Harrison claimed that the low wages for patient-care technical employees have led to high staff turnover, as well as a reduction in the level of patient care.
“A lot of our essential positions at the hospital are staffed at half. … People come (to the hospital) to work for a year or two years, and then they go on to institutions that pay more,” Harrison said.
She added that the inability of the UC to retain workers leads to inefficiency and, often, dangerous errors.
Patrick Hale, an X-ray technician at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said that having to constantly retrain new staff means greater errors in processing and data entry.
“The potential for catastrophic failure in patient care is pretty huge,” Hale said, citing the six new people who were hired in the last two months.
Hale added that recruiting new workers has also been difficult.
“There are other area hospitals that have better pay structures and step raises, free parking and things like that,” Hale said.
Harrison said that the state budget cuts shouldn’t impact the workers’ wages, as such a low percentage of available revenue is from the state.
Savickas said that the university hopes to reach an agreement with AFSCME.
“In order to reach an agreement, (the union and the UC) will need to work very hard to achieve a compromise,” Savickas said.
Union supporters include the Undergraduate Students Association Council, which passed a resolution in support of the workers, and former President Clinton, who announced that he would not speak at the UCLA commencement ceremony until the contract is settled.
“While I’m honored to be invited and really looking forward to speaking at UCLA’s commencement ceremonies, I can’t cross the picket line. I hope it can be resolved quickly,” Clinton said in a statement.