the killing of Alberto Rangel<\/a>, a social worker at Ward 86, an HIV clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Following the demonstration, marchers crossed 16th Street to Mission Hall in an attempt to deliver a demand letter to Chancellor Sam Hawgood\u2019s office.<\/p>\nA university representative told the group no one was available to receive it. A social worker handed over the letter anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy colleague was killed in front of us,\u201d said Julia Pascoe, a Ward 86 social worker who presented the letter. \u201cIt\u2019s been three months and one day, and no one has contacted us back to have a meeting about our safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
Survey findings<\/p>\n
According to a survey released by the union Thursday, 90% of UCSF outpatient clinical social workers reported experiencing some form of physical, sexual, or verbal threat, assault or intimidation on the job. More than one in five reported being violently assaulted. Fifty percent said they had been sexually assaulted or harassed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly 5% of those surveyed reported they had not witnessed or experienced any form of verbal, physical, or sexual assault or harassment,\u201d said John Willard, a social worker who emceed the rally. \u201cThis is the everyday reality for my colleagues and myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Street social workers know the job they\u2019re signing up for is no picnic, but they expect their employer to take steps to keep them safe. Yet while 90% said they had reported safety concerns, respondents said management either did not address the concern, responded in what they characterized as a retaliatory manner, or acted only after an unreasonable delay 50% of the time.<\/p>\n
Witness to the attack<\/p>\n
During the rally, Alejandro Alvarez, a clinical social worker at Ward 86 who said he was present when Rangel was killed, spoke about physically intervening in an attempt to stop the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI made the decision in that moment knowing I could lose my life, and I was nearly killed,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWhat comes after that moment is not something you clock out of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alvarez said a sheriff\u2019s deputy assigned to the unit did not immediately intervene and had to be prompted by staff before acting \u2014 an account he said was corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses. He said the sequence of events contradicted the public narrative put out by the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs\u2019 Association and called on UC leadership to correct the record.<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s department and UCSF did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n
Two-tier pay dispute<\/p>\n
Workers also pointed to a pay disparity they said has driven turnover and contributed to unsafe conditions. Campus-based outpatient social workers earn on average 31% less than their hospital-based counterparts, Willard said, with fewer staffing resources and higher caseloads.<\/p>\n
Tia Blackburn, a Ward 86 social worker who has been on medical leave since Rangel\u2019s killing, said her caseload had exceeded 500 patients \u2014 a level at which adequate assessment of each client becomes impossible.<\/p>\n
In UCSF hospitals, 41% of social workers have been with the university for seven or more years, Willard said. In outpatient public health settings, that figure is roughly half.<\/p>\n
Security measures called insufficient<\/p>\n
Workers acknowledged that the Department of Public Health implemented security upgrades at San Francisco General following the December killing, including weapons detection systems and increased security staffing. But they said those measures fall short of what is needed.<\/p>\n
Blackburn said she has heard reports that individuals have still been able to enter the building with weapons despite the new equipment. She hasn\u2019t returned to the clinic since the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not enough,\u201d she said. \u201cDefinitely not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workers\u2019 demands include enhanced safety protocols, reduced patient caseloads, equal pay for campus and hospital social workers, trauma-informed support for staff, and the direct inclusion of frontline workers in decisions about workplace safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cFunding alone does not equal safety,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWe need transparency, we need accountability, and we need frontline workers at the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Political support, institutional frustration<\/p>\n
Three members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors \u2014 Connie Chan, Shamann Walton and Matt Dorsey \u2014 attended the rally and offered public support for the workers\u2019 demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t take one of our workers\u2019 deaths to raise awareness for a safe working environment,\u201d Chan said. She and Walton said they had each called UCSF directly in recent months to press the issue.<\/p>\n
Dorsey, whose district includes San Francisco General, said Rangel had been a provider for his husband before they were married.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is one thing I have learned in my time working in city government, it\u2019s that the city and county of San Francisco \u2014 like UCSF \u2014 is an employer before it\u2019s anything else,\u201d Dorsey said. \u201cWe have to do our part to make sure that people are safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matias Campos, a UCSF social worker and union vice president, said workers have managed to secure meetings with Mayor Daniel Lurie and Public Health Director Daniel Tsai, but they still haven\u2019t gotten a meeting with Chancellor Hawgood.<\/p>\n
\u201cUCSF as a system has not taken us seriously and has refused to meet with us,\u201d Campos said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of University of California San Francisco social workers gathered outside UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,49246,5476,34914],"class_list":["post-207659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-ucsf-medical-center","tag-unions","tag-zuckerberg-san-francisco-general-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}