As a long-tenured social worker at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospital Oakland, Ruth Crowe has seen East Bay families face greater challenges in accessing care since UCSF affiliated with the hospital in 2014 and began moving services to San Francisco.
Crowe, who has worked at the hospital for 23 years, recalls a family from Antioch, whose child was sent to UCSF’s children’s hospital in San Francisco after spending four months in the NICU in Oakland.
“They had a car that often broke down, and they would have to pay a bridge toll and gas to get there,” she said. “It was a huge problem because they also needed childcare assistance and were being sent farther from home.”
Crowe helped that family advocate to return to the Oakland hospital. Now she and her 1,300 fellow NUHW members are taking on UCSF once more — this time to keep their union and their hard-earned paychecks.
As part of what UCSF is calling an “Integration Plan,” the university is seeking to cancel its NUHW contracts, move nearly all NUHW members into UC unions, and consequently cut their take-home pay by an average of $10,000. Dozens of workers whose jobs aren’t represented by UC unions would lose union representation altogether. UCSF is planning to proceed with the integration on July 6.
“I go between being completely outraged to being dismayed and sad and grieving,” Crowe said. “We have less than two months to show that all of our hard work, passion, and dedication to patient care is worth something. We have to fight for what is right and show the hospital and UCSF how to care for their patients and employees.”
Children’s Hospital Oakland affiliated with UCSF in 2014, but has remained a separate hospital independent from UCSF Health. UCSF’s “integration plan” wouldn’t change that, but it would force its Children’s Hospital Workers to be rehired as direct UCSF employees.
For the 1,300 NUHW members at the hospital like Crowe that would mean a significant reduction in take-home pay because they’d have to pay thousands of dollars more for their health and retirement benefits. For patients, it would mean potentially losing dedicated caregivers and staunch advocates for preserving critical pediatric care in the East Bay.
In 2020, NUHW members helped pass Measure C, an Alameda County Sales tax hike that is providing hundreds of millions of dollars that UCSF can use to pay for renovations to Children’s Hospital Oakland.
As UCSF started moving services to its newer children’s hospital across the Bay, NUHW members held a virtual Town Hall with local officials during the worst days of COVID. In response, the Oakland City Council passed a resolution opposing the loss of services and calling on UCSF to form a diverse leadership board including workers to ensure that the hospital is transparent and accountable in providing services that are accessible to all city residents.
Following a strike in 2023, NUHW secured pioneering language in their contract that made it much more difficult for UCSF to move services out of the East Bay or subcontract their work.
Now Crowe and her colleagues are determined to keep their hard-earned contracts, and their union, which has made them a leading advocate for maintaining pediatric care in the East Bay.
Workers held a mass rally in April and a second rally on May 1, where they were joined by other hospital workers, who are members of different unions. At the May 1 rally, Crowe and her fellow NUHW members started circulating a petition for a strike in opposition to the “integration plan.”
They are also calling on elected officials to stand up for their rights as unionized healthcare workers.
Crowe recently called the office of Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, whose district includes the hospital. She had a long conversation with one of her office staff, who was unaware of the situation.
“I told her that we want to stay with NUHW and want to maintain our contract. I said we really need our elected officials to stand up for the patients and the workers,” Crowe recalled.
The call prompted Assemblymember Wicks to reach out to NUHW to find out more about the situation.
Crowe and her colleagues are also calling Children’s Hospital Oakland President Dr. Nicholas Holmes, telling him the “integration” would be bad for both workers and the patients. Crowe is planning to host some phone banking nights at her home to further mobilize opposition to UCSF’s plan.
If the “integration plan” goes into effect in July as UCSF intends, Crowe fears that the university will eliminate home-based and early intervention programs throughout the East Bay and workers will leave for other hospitals.
“A lot of people worry that if we leave NUHW and become direct UCSF employees, they will not be able to afford to stay at the hospital,” Crowe said. “They might have to go look for a job somewhere else or a second job.”
Earlier in May, several Children’s Hospital workers addressed the UC Board of Regents, calling on them to stop UCSF’s “integration plan.” If they don’t, Crowe is ready to strike.
“We should not be afraid of big entities,” she said. “We are also powerful. We’ve won things in our contracts with NUHW that we never thought we’d win. We have power if we stand unified and we can win if we stand together and fight this.”
