Union behind billionaire tax faces strike from its own campaign workers days before the vote

In a flash of irony and just days before polls close on Prop. 40, the so-called “billionaire tax,” 230 staff members who are doing organizing and political work for SEIU-UHW — the major California union that got the measure on the ballot — have gone on strike against their own union. In doing so, they’ve stopped all Prop. 40 campaign work. 

Demonstrations are happening now at SEIU-UHW’s offices in Oakland, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. SEIU-UHW represents 130,000 healthcare workers — with one of the highest concentrations of them in San Francisco — at hospitals, clinics and dialysis centers across the state. 

SEIU-UHW workers have their own union — SWU Local 2599 — to negotiate pay and working conditions with their bosses at SEIU-UHW.

As a result of the strike, workers who were phone banking and precinct-walking for Prop. 40, are now on the picket line, and are dealing a blow to Prop. 40’s momentum this last push before polls close on Tuesday. 

SEIU-UHW management has no one to blame but themselves, said Wilson Saiki, a picketing union field organizer who represents technical healthcare staff at Kaiser San Francisco.  

“We should all be focused on the Prop. 40 campaign and doing our best to pass it — and here we are striking, not doing our work, because management refuses to bargain in good faith,” Saiki added. “This is the most important week for our election and SEIU-UHW forced us to be out here on strike.”

SEIU-UHW leaders said they “respect and acknowledge” the rights of their workers to go on strike.

“A portion of SEIU-UHW staff are exercising those rights today in light of the current collective bargaining process not yet being fully resolved, and we look forward to resuming bargaining shortly to bring full resolution to the process,” said union spokesperson Renée Saldaña. “The work to pass Prop 40 continues through the massive and growing Billionaire Tax Now coalition which includes hundreds of groups across California.”

The striking union staff say they’ve gone two weeks without a labor agreement with SEIU. The sticking point: Staff are pushing for 5% raises every year for the duration of a new four-year contract, and SEIU management have only agreed to a 2% raise at this point. Picketers said they’ve had nine official bargaining sessions with SEIU-UHW, but that there’s been little progress with the union staff’s demands. 

“We feel we are being disrespected. You would expect unions to do better on labor negotiations with their own staff,” Saiki said. “But when they are the managers, just like any employer, it’s the same dismissiveness.” 

SEIU-UHW workers are still committed to trying to pass Prop. 40, said Doug Jones, a political organizer with SEIU-UHW, over the phone from the picket line in Oakland. “We voluntarily went out and collected signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot when billionaires made it very difficult for us.”  

Prop. 40 would levy a one-time, 5% tax on an estimated 200 billionaires who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026. Most of the money would be spent on health care, filling a $30 billion shortfall in Medi-Cal due to federal cuts after H.R. 1, President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The remaining dollars would go to areas like education and food assistance. 

Aside from the union behind the measure, the wealth tax has been supported by the California Democratic Party, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

It’s also faced significant opposition. San Francisco’s local Democratic Party chapter notably altered its bylaws to break with the state party and oppose the measure, and a group of the state’s billionaires have raised upwards of 293 million so far against it.