The union for thousands of University of California employees said Wednesday they will walk off the job indefinitely beginning May 14 to protest stalled contract negotiations for medical technicians and campus workers.
The open-ended strike by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 is intended to pressure UC to end what the union calls unfair bargaining over pay and benefits for 42,000 union members at five medical centers and 10 campuses across California.
But leaders of the AFSCME 3299 union also want UC to provide housing assistance to the many custodians, gardeners, food service workers, drivers and medical technicians they say can’t afford to live near where they work.
“UC’s lowest-paid frontline workers have been priced out of the communities where they live,” Kathryn Lybarger, the union’s executive vice president, said in a statement.
AFSCME 3299 has filed unfair labor complaints about UC with the state as it negotiates two contracts for patient-care workers (such as respiratory therapists) and service workers (such as cooks) whose labor agreements expired in 2024.
The union is accusing UC of refusing to bargain over housing aid its leaders say is needed by employees who sometimes rely on “homeless shelters, public housing, sleeping in their cars and enduring impossibly long commutes due to low wages and skyrocketing housing costs.”
UC representatives were not immediately available to comment.
But in February, UC said that it had offered the union “annual, across-the-board increases of 7%, 6%, 5.5%, and 5% from 2026 through 2029,” amounting to 32% raises when combined with a 5% increase provided in 2025, said Heather Hansen, a spokesperson for UC President James Milliken.
Hansen said at the time that UC also proposed that no employee would earn less than $25 an hour, and offered other pay increases.
Union officials counter that UC has imposed working conditions that they have not agreed to, and has not agreed to negotiate housing assistance even as executives and chancellors receive housing perks in the form of sub-market rate home loans.
“We have been left with no choice but to strike,” Michael Avant, AFSCME 3299’s president, said in the union’s statement.
In the past, the union has staged brief walkouts. Leaders say the May 14 strike will be their first open-ended labor action.
AFSCME 3299 said it is giving the hospital system a month’s notice to give UC time to create a contingency plan to accommodate patients during the strike.
The union said it will also exempt critical care workers from participating in the labor action.