UC executives have spent 2 years saying ‘no’ to UPTE’s proposals for fair wages, benefits, and job security. Meanwhile, they have moved forward with outsourcing more our work in order to increase the number of workers who won’t be covered by union contracts at all.
UC executives know that if they can reduce the number of union workers it will be that much easier for them to run UC in their own interests rather than that of patients, students, and the people of California.
In the last few months alone we have received news of the following:
- Outsourcing of all work at a new ‘public-private’ partnership between UC Davis and Kindred Healthcare. This will be built with public funding on UC land but allow Kindred to profit by paying lower salaries and benefits. UPTE Therapists, IT workers, and others will be forced to do the same work for lower pay – or be forced to leave their specialty, their patients, and their work for another assignment elsewhere at the University. Kindred paid $12 million just last year to settle claims regarding violations of labor law and $125 million to settle claims of Medicare fraud. How does this kind of partner benefit the UC community?
- Outsourcing of $56 million of IT work each year at the 5 Medical Centers: UC Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. UPTE helped organize IT workers to resist UCSF’s outsourcing push in 2016, which successfully delayed its’ expansion to the rest of the Medical Centers – until now.
We are working to obtain more details about this outsourcing and other plans that UC is developing but they have not provided information in a timely fashion – nor have the agreed to our demands to meet and bargain the effects of this outsourcing on our workers.
Their failure to bargain these effects is not only illegal – it shows incredible disregard for the work of thousands of dedicated UC staff who make UC among the greatest hospital and university systems in the world.
We need to be prepared to both stand up to UC’s ongoing violation of our rights but also to win improved protections against outsourcing in our contract fight in order to prevent outsourcing from continuing to undermine our fight to provide the best education, healthcare, and research to the people of California.
Click here to sign a strike pledge today and let us know that you are ready to continue fighting for a UC for the Many!