Strike vote comes after the National Union of Healthcare Workers filed lawsuit seeking to block UCSF’s “Integration Plan.”
By folding Children’s Hospital Oakland into UCSF Health, UCSF would cut take home pay for its East Bay healthcare workers, forcing them to pay thousands more for their health and retirement benefits.
OAKLAND — Workers at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland are preparing to go on strike to stop UCSF’s plan to integrate the hospital into UCSF Health — a move that would cost workers their union and at least $7,000 per year in take-home pay.
During a noon rally outside the hospital on Thursday, members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents 1,300 Children’s Hospital employees, will start circulating a petition to authorize a strike that would likely take place in June, one month before UCSF’s integration plan is scheduled to take effect.
Last month, the union, whose members at Children’s Hospital Oakland include respiratory therapists, nursing assistants, clerical staff, housekeepers and medical technicians, as well as occupational, speech and mental health therapists, filed a lawsuit arguing that UCSF’s plan violated their union contract. A hearing on the lawsuit has yet to be scheduled.
“This is wage theft and subcontracting by the University of California, and we’re not going to let it happen,” said Jackie Schalit, a mental health therapist at a Children’s Hospital Oakland early intervention program. “We care for East Bay kids, and that care will not be as good if UCSF can get away with cutting our take-home pay, eliminating our union and assigning some of us to work in San Francisco.”
WHO/WHAT: Hundreds of healthcare workers, chanting, marching and rallying with community allies. The rally is being organized by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, but will also include workers at the hospital who aren’t NUHW members, including registered nurses, engineers and scientists.
WHERE/WHEN: Noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, May 1, outside UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, 747 52nd Street, Oakland.
UCSF affiliated with Children’s Hospital Oakland in 2014, running it as a private non-profit entity separate from UCSF Health. However, earlier this year, UCSF informed workers of an integration plan that would take effect in July.
The plan is not a merger. It would not change anything pertaining to the hospital’s ownership structure, funding or license. The only tangible change would be to the employment status of its East Bay workers, allowing UCSF to significantly cut their take-home pay and keep that money for itself.
Under the plan, UCSF would effectively terminate its approximately 2,500 workers at Children’s Hospital Oakland and its satellite clinics across the East Bay and rehire them as direct UCSF employees. That move would terminate their union contracts and make them members of UCSF unions, whose contracts require workers to pay thousands of dollars more for their health and retirement benefits. In a third-party conducted vote last month, 98 percent of NUHW members casting ballots stated their preference for remaining in their union.
NUHW members are able to strike over the move because the contract for many of its members at Children’s Hospital Oakland expires today, April 30. The agreement, which remains in effect even after the expiration date, secured better pay as well as provisions that make it harder for UCSF to subcontract out jobs or shift services from the East Bay to San Francisco.
“UCSF’s integration plan is not about patient care, it’s about stealing money from its workers and denying them the right to choose their union,” NUHW President Sophia Mendoza said. “The university is going to have a hard time keeping caregivers in the East Bay if it goes through with taking at least $20 million out of their pockets and into UCSF’s coffers.”
# # #
The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawai’i, including more than 1,300 workers at UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland and satellite clinics.
