Twenty thousand University of California healthcare, research, and technical professionals, represented by the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), will participate in a statewide Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike on April 1. The strike will take place across UC campuses, hospitals, and laboratories, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The strike will start at midnight on Tuesday, April 1, and continue until 11:59 p.m. The local picket lines will be at UC San Diego Medical Center, 9300 Campus Point Drive, La Jolla.

The latest ULP charge against UC centers on UC forcing newly organized groups of workers into their own separate negotiation process to render the bargaining process hopelessly impractical and ineffective — a classic “divide-and-conquer” strategy that violates the law. They have also doubled down on their plans to unilaterally and unlawfully increase health insurance costs for some of the most vulnerable union members outside of the bargaining process.

None of UC’s actions serve to address the staffing crisis leading to negative patient outcomes, threatening the state’s bird flu response, delaying care for at-risk patients, and impacting research on diseases like cancer.

UC spokespeople claim there is no staffing crisis. Yet UC leadership, including some Regents, has expressed concerns publicly about vacancies and their impacts. President Drake admitted that UC is leaving thousands of positions vacant year-over-year as a money-saving measure, telling the Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance in February that, “We have thousands of vacant positions that we continue to roll vacant year after year and use that funding to be able to support the gaps that we have.”

In a 2024 Health Services Committee Meeting, UC Regent Sures expressed concern about “overcrowding in emergency departments at UC medical centers and increasing patient wait times.” In 2023, UC’s CFO, Nathan Brostrom, stated at a Board of Regents meeting that vacancy rates are three times what they were pre-pandemic, and “that is not a good thing for the staff experience, faculty experience, or student experience.”