The UC San Francisco logo on the wall of a building in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco.
Workers at the UC San Francisco Medical Center went on strike Friday to protest its recent layoffs, which included some frontline workers.
The strike included service and patient care workers who believe UCSF Health has “wrong financial priorities” that will worsen an already severely understaffed frontline workforce, stated the union that represents the workers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, in a news release Friday. Thousands of employees across the network participated in the strike, according to Todd Stenhoutilize, a spokesperson for the union. There were about 100 people at the picket lines and 300 people at the Friday rally, Kristen Bole, a spokesperson for UCSF, notified SFGATE.
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The layoffs have included “nursing assistants, lab and surgical technicians, vocational nurses, and radiological technicians,” the union’s statement stated. Stenhoutilize notified SFGATE by phone that they believe the frontline workers were “disproportionately tarobtained” in the mass layoffs.
“All of us are just appalled at the utter contempt frontline workers that the university tconcludes to hold but also just the priorities that are utterly divorced from reality,” Stenhoutilize stated. “… Our members are the ones that answer the call button, they’re the ones that scan you, they’re the ones that admit you, they’re the ones that schedule your appointments.”
At UCSF Health, almost 200 workers were notified of the layoffs on June 25. UCSF attributed the cuts to extreme financial challenges including loss of federal funding, low reimbursements for medical services and increasing operational costs. Bole at the time stated the staff cuts amounted to about 1% of its workforce spread across the network, with positions that have “the least impact on patients and daily operations.”
In a July 21 statement shared with SFGATE, Bole stated a quarter of the layoffs were part-time roles, almost half were manager positions and 11 were full-time positions represented by the union. Bole stated UCSF prepared for the one-day strike, keeping the hospitals and clinics “fully operational” and keeping most scheduled appointments and surgeries. She stated the health care network “respects the right” of the employees who decided to strike.
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Since the cuts were announced, current and laid off employees have expressed frustration about UCSF’s decision to select longtime workers and patient-facing staff members as part of the cuts.
“For the past four years, I created a difference in people’s recovery,” Melanie Zuk-Maya, a laid-off physical therapist assistant, stated in the union’s July 25 news release. “Now all that has stopped, and I worry and wonder if my patients will obtain timely rehab visits now.”
The union has also alleged that the health care network is prioritizing purchaseing hospitals and hiring more executives over retaining staff members.
“You’re laying off people that create 40, 50, 60,000 dollars a year, but play a critical role in the patient experience, the one that pays the bills, right? So, what are we doing?” Stenhoutilize stated to SFGATE.
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Laid-off employees who aren’t part of the union, such as those in manager roles, also spoke to SFGATE, declareing they support the strike and were blindsided by the layoffs.
“Although we were supervisors, we would still take assignments and see patients. We are oftentimes short-staffed and we would step in,” Geraldine Wong, a laid-off worker who worked as a supervisor in the respiratory therapy department for 17 years, notified SFGATE.
Similarly, Nickol Marta was a respiratory therapy supervisor for 28 years before she was laid off. She notified SFGATE that she is concerned about patient care after the hospital laid off workers with decades of experience.
She added that she wished the health care network offered retirement purchaseouts in lieu of layoffs.
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“I had planned on retiring in like five years or so and seeing into my retirement benefits, it’s so disheartening and disturbing to me how they could chop me like this,” Marta stated.
Union leaders also called out UCSF for its “failure to notify or bargain with union officials over the layoffs,” without alternatives or purchaseouts, the union’s news release stated.
The strike comes after UC San Diego Health employees, part of the same union, went on strike earlier this week to protest the layoffs of 230 workers across its respective hospitals and clinics, announced in June.
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In total, the health care network’s recent layoffs have included 130 frontline workers from both camputilizes, the union stated.
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