DAY 6: Children’s Hospital Oakland Strike
Strike lines continue this week with hearing scheduled Thursday on workers’ motion to stop UCSF from canceling union contracts and cutting take-home pay
The strike at UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland is entering its second week today with hundreds of workers returning to picket lines at 7 a.m. this morning. Workers throughout the hospital and satellite clinics across the East Bay began an open-ended strike last Wednesday determined to stop UCSF Health from illegally canceling their union contracts and cutting their take-home pay — a move that is already causing long-tenured caregivers to leave the understaffed hospital.
On Thursday, U.S District Judge Richard Seeborg is scheduled to consider a motion filed by National Union of Healthcare Workers, seeking a temporary injunction to stop UCSF’s “integration plan,” which is scheduled to take effect on July 6. NUHW members would lose their union, their seniority and on average about $10,000 in take-home pay, if UCSF is allowed to proceed.
NUHW, which represents 1,300 workers at the hospital including most of the caregivers who aren’t registered nurses, is also asking Judge Seeborg to compel arbitration over the legality of the “integration plan,” which the union maintains violates a prohibition in its contracts with the hospital against subcontracting.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, June 26, at the San Francisco Courthouse, Courtroom 3 – 17th Floor, 450 Golden Gate Ave.
Picket lines are continuing every day outside the Oakland hospital and will begin three days a week in Walnut Creek.
WHO/WHAT: Children’s Hospital Oakland workers walking strike lines in Oakland and Walnut Creek.
WHEN/WHERE:
- Monday — Friday: 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., outside Children’s Hospital Oakland, 747 52nd St., Oakland.
- Saturday and Sunday: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. outside Children’s Hospital Oakland, 747 52nd St., Oakland.
- Monday — Wednesday: 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. outside Children’s Hospital Oakland Outpatient Center, 2401 Shadelands
Dr., Walnut Creek.
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 money 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.
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.
“UCSF will not improve care in Oakland by pushing out dedicated caregivers who have made our hospital so welcoming to local families,” said Jackki Patrick, a patient care assistant at the hospital for over thirty years. “We’re committed to providing the best care for Oakland kids, and we’re fighting UCSF because we know it’s only focused on its bottom line.”
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.
“This is a money grab by the University of California,” said Alexandra Aragon, an office administrator at the hospital. “UCSF isn’t trying to improve pediatric health in the East Bay, it’s trying to maximize its profit on the backs of its workers, and that will mean less care that’s accessible for East Bay families.”
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 have chosen to individually honor the picket line.
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The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii, including more than 1,300 workers at UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland and satellite clinics.
