NUHW members, and many of their colleagues represented by other unions, have begun an open-ended strike aimed at stopping UCSF Health from illegally cancelling their union contracts and their take home pay — a move that could lead to fewer services and staff at the hospital.
“They’re trying to turn Oakland into a ghost hospital, where the license remains, but there are no employees,” Ruth Crowe, a social worker in the neonatal intensive care unit, told the East Bay Times. “What we’ve seen during this affiliation that we’ve had is that UCSF has taken more and more control, Children’s Hospital Oakland has lost more autonomy, and we’ve seen that in how services are provided.”
Nearly every Bay Area news outlet covered the first day of the strike, including KQED, Oaklandside, NBC Bay Area, ABC-7, KTVU-2, San Francisco Chronicle, KRON-4, KPIX-5 and KALW.
NUHW members launched the strike on Wednesday June 18 with registered nurses, represented by the California Nurses Association, and operating engineers, represented by IUOE, Local 39, authorizing sympathy strikes.
In anticipation of the strike, UCSF officials closed clinics in Walnut Creek, San Ramon and Brentwood and canceled all elective surgeries and non-urgent orthopedic appointments.
The 1,300 NUHW members at Children’s Hospital Oakland would lose their union, about $10,000 in take home pay on average, as well as their seniority after being made direct UCSF Health employees. The transition, which UCSF is calling an “Integration Plan,” would go into effect on July 6.
“We’re determined to stop UCSF from canceling our contracts, because it would make it harder for us to provide for our families and advocate for the East Bay kids we serve,” said Marques Williams, a pharmacy tech at the hospital. “UCSF has never prioritized keeping care in Oakland, and we’ll lose more services and workers, if we don’t stop the university from busting our union and taking money out of our pockets.”
Currently workers at Children’s Hospital Oakland and its East Bay satellite clinics are employed by the hospital, not by UCSF Health. However, under the “Integration Plan,” UCSF Health would effectively require Children’s Hospital Oakland to terminate employees at the hospital and satellite clinics and rehire them as direct UCSF employees to do the same work at the same facilities for significantly less take-home pay.
Most employees at Children’s Hospital Oakland would be transferred into UC unions whose contracts leave workers with less take-home pay primarily because they are required to pay thousands of dollars more toward their health and retirement benefits. Dozens of workers, whose jobs are not represented by UC unions, would lose union representation altogether.
“If UCSF gets its way, I’ll have no union and no workplace rights,” said Karen Villanueva, an acupuncturist at the hospital, who would become an at-will employee under UCSF’s “integration plan.” “This level of union-busting is something I would have expected from Donald Trump, not the University of California.”
The transition threatens to further reduce services at the Oakland hospital as workers consider leaving or retiring rather than starting over as UCSF employees with less take-home pay, no seniority and the potential of being assigned to work at a UCSF hospital in San Francisco.
“This is a cynical attempt by UCSF to push out caregivers, who have served and advocated for East Bay kids for generations,” said Griselda Chavez, an infant development specialist. “UCSF wants cheaper, less experienced workers, and it wants to be able to move them across the Bay, so they can’t advocate for Oakland families.”
NUHW members at Children’s Hospital Oakland have spoken out about UCSF keeping hundreds of caregiver jobs vacant in the East Bay while moving services that have been available for generations at the Oakland hospital to UCSF’s children’s hospital in San Francisco.
All three labor agreements between NUHW and Children’s Hospital Oakland include provisions that make it harder for UCSF to subcontract out jobs or shift services from the East Bay to San Francisco. Those protections would no longer be in place if UCSF is able to cancel the contracts.
Integration Plan is not a merger
Children’s Hospital Oakland affiliated with UCSF Health in 2014, with the hospital remaining a private nonprofit separate from the university. UCSF’s “Integration Plan” is not a merger. The hospital, where the vast majority of patients qualify for Medi-Cal, would retain its ownership structure, license, and private nonprofit status, which allows it to collect substantial federal funding, as a Federally Qualified Health Center.
However, by canceling union contracts and forcing workers into UC unions, UCSF would effectively be transferring about $20 million out of the pockets of its East Bay workforce into its own coffers.
UCSF Health is taking money from its Oakland workers even though Alameda County taxpayers are providing hundreds of millions of dollars toward construction of a new hospital through Measure C, a 2020 county sales tax increase.
“UCSF won’t improve care for Oakland kids by violating our rights and cutting our take-home pay, said Cameron Lewis, a patient ambassador at the hospital. “It’s going to force out really good workers and make it harder for UCSF to provide services that our families in Oakland have counted on for generations.”
NUHW has filed a grievance over the “integration plan” on grounds that it violates the prohibition against subcontracting in its union contracts. However, Children’s Hospital Oakland has refused to select an arbitrator, forcing NUHW to file a lawsuit seeking to compel arbitration. A federal judge is scheduled to hear the complaint on June 26.
In an independently-conducted vote in April, 98 percent of NUHW members casting ballots stated their preference for remaining in their union.
Workers who authorized the strike include NUHW-represented nursing assistants, respiratory therapists, housekeepers, clerical workers, and medical technicians whose contracts expired in April, but remain in effect.
NUHW-represented professional workers at the hospital, who include mental health therapists, speech therapists and occupational therapists, are unable to authorize a strike because their contract doesn’t expire until September, but many will choose to individually honor the picket line.
