University officials said in a statement they implemented other parts of their offer this summer, including a $25 minimum wage, “to ensure these employees receive meaningful and immediate pay and benefit increases.” The union had sought to make that minimum wage retroactive to 2023.
Liz Perlman, AFSCME 3299’s executive director, said the university’s offer failed to account for post-pandemic inflation and that the union’s demands are meant to keep up with rising costs. She also questioned the university’s claims of financial strain.
“They literally just bought and acquired two new hospitals here in the Bay Area, six hospitals down in Southern California,” Perlman said. “If you’re broke, you don’t go on a shopping spree.”
Perlman also said uncompetitive wages and persistent short staffing has driven high turnover, with more than 13,000 workers leaving voluntarily over the past three years.
Bedford said she believes short staffing in her department is partially responsible for a rotary cuff injury that she suffered earlier this year. The injury has put her out of work — and created more work for her colleagues.
She described the physical strain of hauling weedwackers across the lab’s hilly terrain.
“We don’t have enough people to cover all the areas, so we’re doubling back to do another area and another area, repetitive with the same heavy equipment. So it takes a wear and tear on your body,” Bedford said.
Nurses who had planned to join the strike in solidarity said the impacts of short staffing and turnover are clear.
Maggie Ming, an intensive care unit nurse in the flow pool — meaning they are assigned wherever ICUs are short staffed — said an ongoing hiring freeze means people are quitting faster than the positions can be filled.
“You get one respiratory therapist in an ICU to 16 patients, like there’s gonna be such a high amount of burnout and such an amount of moral distress that you can’t take care of everyone, that of course people are quitting,” Ming said. “Add on top the fact that the benefits aren’t really that amazing and that the pay isn’t really great. They’re not making it very competitive for people to want to work at UC.”
Ming said they hoped that nurses joining in a sympathy strike would underscore the importance of the technical workers they rely on.
“Their struggle is our struggle,” Ming said. “I can’t work unless the respiratory therapists are working, unless the nurses’ aides are here. I need them and they need me and we work together to hopefully create a good patient experience.”
Despite being out of work recovering from her shoulder injury, Bedford said she still plans to commute from Stockton to join the picket line.
“In a sling and all, I am going to be on a picket line because enough is enough,” Bedford said.
