Twenty labor advocates who refused to leave a UC Board of Regents meeting on Thursday, protesting what they called a staffing crisis that’s left patients vulnerable, were arrested by university police officers, a union representative said.
UCSF healthcare workers had started picketing outside a UC Board of Regents meeting in Mission Bay in the morning, saying San Francisco’s underserved populations — including refugees, the unhoused, and people struggling with mental illness — are most affected by understaffing and high turnover rates.
Following the close of public comment at the board meeting, a group of labor advocates refused to leave. It is unclear where police took those who were arrested, and what charges they face.
Conditions are dire as it is, protesters said. Even when city services are available, people are left waiting up to 50 hours in the emergency department because there aren’t enough healthcare providers to see them.
“It’s just horrific,” said Cecily D., a social worker in the emergency department at UCSF’s Parnassus Campus. “The dam is exploding and we’re just trying to patch it.”
Yesterday, when her emergency department was at capacity, Cecily said 30 patients waited between nine and 15 hours. A physician, she added, emptied a urinal because there weren’t enough nurses.
UCSF social workers, who said they are paid up to a third less than their hospital-based peers, were part of a crowd of over 100 UCSF researchers, doctors and technicians. Led by union organizers, they chanted as they circled the Mission Bay campus: “UC, UC, you can’t hide. We can see your greedy side.”
The university says it is providing fair compensation.
“Given the continued threats to federal funding, the University is grateful it has been able to provide its UPTE and AFSCME-represented employees with fair and reasonable wage and health-care offers,” said Heather Hansen, a spokesperson for the University of California Office of the President.
According to Hansen, the university’s last offer met the unions’ original wage request of $25 an hour and a five-percent wage increase. She added that while the University of California supports employees’ free speech, protesters are expected to abide by “reasonable time, place and manner rules.”
According to a union statement, the San Francisco Homelessness Oversight Commission has cited UCSF for noncompliance because of hiring and retention issues, and the city’s healthcare network, Citywide, has received a performance letter about under-spending.
After a year of negotiation, organizers said, the goal of Thursday’s rally was to bring the university back to the bargaining table, lift the hiring freeze, and hire more front-line workers.
When Cecily started a decade ago, sensitive conversations with patients were held behind closed doors. Now, after an influx of people in need over the last few years, she said they’re held beside beds in the hallway. “There’s no dignity.”
Often, she added, emergency departments act as the city’s “safety net” because, unlike shelters or treatment centers, they accept people in crisis 24/7.
But long wait times can make the difference between someone with a substance-use disorder going into treatment or going into withdrawal, Cecily said. They can cause someone on an involuntary psychiatric hold to be physically and chemically restrained in a hallway overnight, or even over the weekend, until a clinician can see them.
“Patients are committing suicide because they cannot wait on this waitlist that is so long we cannot keep it staffed appropriately,” said Chey Dean, an Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s drug researcher and union organizer. “And the university doesn’t even care.”
Several healthcare providers gave examples of how employee attrition had hindered their ability to provide quality service.
Burnout recently left a six-person team serving Black clients in a 400-patient network understaffed, said Robyn Miles, a clinical social worker of 13 years. UCSF’s hiring freeze meant that they were unable to fill the gap with an intern who had been training with the team for the last year, she said.
Senior physician assistant and union secretary Matt Stephen said his head and neck surgery team had lost two physicians, one assistant, two speech therapists, and three audiologists in the last month alone.
“Turnover is unsustainable for a healthcare system,” Stephen said. “Treating it like a 1980s Toyota assembly line is not how you provide good care.”
Thank you for this piece! Glad to see overworked UC employees advocating for their patients and themselves. UC is run like a ruthless corporation by rich regents who give themselves gigantic raises. It should be about patient care.
Also see the KGO 7 report on how commuting employees will be barred from parking at the Parnassus campus. WTF?
Good for them! I can attest that at least one of their waitlists is absolutely ridiculous. Back in December I was referred for a rheumatologist because I was diagnosed with a form of arthritis that can result in permanent joint damage if left untreated for only one or two months. Onset of symptoms is rapid and immediate treatment for this condition is a huge priority. I was told by UCSF it would take a month or two to just process the referral and even schedule an appointment and then the appointment itself would be 9-10 months later than that. It would take a whole year just to get a first consultation! Luckily I can afford a more expensive concierge doctor who was able to meet with me right away, but if I didn’t have that kind of money I would no doubt still be waiting for an appointment and left with permanent, potentially immobilizing damage.
The University of California is now the 2nd largest health provider in California, which is the 4th largest economy in the world. I worked for UC my entire adult life and the wages are far below other public sector workers. UC also has a track record of being slow to hire people, which means those who have jobs are doing the work of 2-3 others while UC gets salary savings on the unfilled positions.
As a fellow UC Berkeley graduate and emergency physician, this is the reason I left the state. I would love to come back and work and live in my city. But until the woke policies, illegal immigration, income taxes and house prices come back to something that resembles the prosperous state that I grew up in, I won’t be returning.
I am not convinced that this labor action will accomplish much. Almost every labor union today functions as an institution to limit strikes, divide workers, and assure their own providence.
Yes, union bureaucrats can point to loud, attention-grabbing limited strikes as evidence for any small gains workers may eventually win.
But will those gains translate into wages that can keep up with inflation, and guarantee workers keep their jobs?
I am truly sick of watching– again and again– the turnover and impoverishment of workers who enthusiastically supported their union’s staged limited strikes, sincerely believing their lives would improve.
That is what is happening in the auto industry now. The UAW crowed that it had won historic concessions on behalf of the autoworkers they were supposed to represent with their flamboyant but toothless “stand up strikes” in 2023.
Now, the UAW is kissing Trump’s behind, siding with his tariffs, and promoting nationalism to keep autoworkers from realizing that their counterparts in other countries are exploited in almost the exact same ways. There is an industry wide, world-wide bloodbath of autoworker jobs taking place now. And it’s happening not only because of EVs or AI. It’s happening because workers are divided.
Workers in every industry should be leery of the promises their unions make them today.
They should realize their true power and live the slogans of solidarity they chant. Workers and their genuine advocates should unite across localities, and even across professions, to flex their real power! They need a new way to organize to do that.
Why were the San Francisco dockworker strikes in the 1930s so powerful?
They closed the whole city down, and practically every city worker joined in. It scared the bejesus out of the establishment that, for a time, made significant concessions to keep a lid on a real revolution breaking out!
Some people may admire today’s dainty strikes, with police escorting smiling faces.
Those of you who face years of struggle and debts, or watch your idealism crumble into an endless underappreciated treadmill– you must ask more questions, and make more demands!
I believe the way forward is to form rank-and-file worker committees that are independent, democratic, and correspondent!
Obviously this militant union’s action flies in the face of your assertions. They literally put their money where their mouths are, walk the walk, etc.
You’d be surprised to learn that this struggle comes up every five years as UC union contracts expire, and that UC strikes always eventually win their demands. (This wasn’t a strike.)
You’d also be surprised to learn that this action was organized by union leaders at the top. Another of your assertions shattered.
You can try organizing some time rather than offering ill-informed prescriptions for millions of American workers in a comments section.
They’re striking for more money. Which is fine: that’s why most unions strike.
But they’re wrapping it up in a social-conscience tortilla that doesn’t really apply.
Ask them what they want. The answer is more money.
I doubt you or your loved ones would want to be treated and cared for by an overworked, understaffed, underpaid team when your life is on the line. Maybe you have no social conscience but it’s clearly on display in this article.
These healthcare workers aren’t striking for more money, they’re striking for the benefits and compensation they deserve from one of the largest/ wealthiest/most prestigious medical organizations in the world. Many of the unions’ key issues have been around unfair labor practices, benefit cuts, healthcare premiums, and illegal unilateral moves (like the hiring freeze). Just because some folks have bought the University of California’s union busting PR campaign doesn’t make UC’s unfair and illegal business practices acceptable. Calling on one of the most powerful employers in all of California to Americans to do better by their health workers is about standing up for humanity.
Fabio, if you had read the article, you’d understand the relationship between more money and the ability to serve patients.
Do you know anyone who works there Fabio? No. Your opinion is as valid as a guess.