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The front entrance to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, in Palo Alto, CA. (Photo By Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO – Two major Bay Area medical centers on Wednesday announced staff reductions due to reduced funding.
The Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and the University of California San Francisco Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases announced they would be eliminating a combined 115 jobs.
Force reduction
What we know:
The UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases announced the elimination of 28 positions — two faculty and 26 staff positions.
“The current fiscal year’s budget… is 53% lower than the prior year because of shifts in private funding sources… not related to federal funding,” a release from the institute states.
Staffers represented by the University Professional and Technical Employees union voiced their anger at the layoffs at a protest held Wednesday afternoon outside the Sandler Neurosciences Center in San Francisco.
“These cuts come on the heels of layoffs at UCSF in recent months, as misplaced priorities at the institution continue putting capital expansion and management growth at the forefront while slashing essential, lifesaving jobs,” a statement from the UPTE reads.
Around 20 of the positions are researchers and veterinary technicians involved in finding treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple System Atrophy and prion diseases.
Slowed research
Why you should care:
Of the 28 jobs eliminated, 22 are represented by labor unions: the UPTE, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, United Auto Workers.
“Every day laid-off workers are not in the lab is an extra day that our friends, neighbors and loved ones wait for treatments that could save their lives,” Mai Pham, a staff research associate said in a press release. Pham was part of a team preparing to send a new drug to the FDA prior to the layoffs.
“When you’re diagnosed with neurodegenerative diseases, they’re usually fatal 100% of the time as your brain and body’s function slowly shut down. We had a chance to give people hope but instead we’re giving researchers pink slips,” Pham said.
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
What they’re saying:
The Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford announced 87 positions, or slightly more than 1% of its workforce, had been eliminated as part of an operational restructuring.
“Positions impacted were in management, support areas, administrative services, and clinical care,” a press release from the organization states. “These latest actions are in addition to steps taken earlier in the year when we planned for and responded to changes in policy and reductions in healthcare funding nationally by implementing a hiring freeze and reducing temporary and contracted labor.”
Those Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital staffers whose positions were eliminated will continue to have a job for 60 days.
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