THOUSANDS OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA medical and campus workers at five medical centers across the state are set to walk off their jobs Thursday in a strike with no predetermined end date.
Doctors and nurses will not be on strike, so most medical centers will be open, but some services will be disrupted or delayed if the strike happens. All emergency rooms will remain open.
Medical staff members preparing to strike include radiology, lab and ultrasound technicians, respiratory and mental health therapists, pharmacists and nurses’ aides and many others. They will be joined by thousands of service workers across UC’s 10 university campuses, from custodians and groundskeepers to security guards and cooks.
Contracts expired in 2024 for about 42,000 medical and service workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. The union has since filed unfair-labor complaints with the state, accusing UC of imposing working conditions the union has not agreed to.
The university says the sides have made “meaningful progress at the bargaining table this week” and that they are “closer than ever” to an agreement ahead of the scheduled strike.
Picket lines are scheduled from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Thursday at the five medical centers in San Francisco, Sacramento, Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as on the UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara campuses.
This story originally appeared in EdSource.
