Hospital employees and supporters gather for a rally outside of the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in Oakland on April 19, 2023, during a one-day strike authorized by more than 1,200 members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers at the Oakland and Walnut Creek hospitals. Hundreds of hospital workers held the picket line in opposition to UCSF’s plan to soon rehire them as UC employees, which they say would replace their union contracts and cut their take-home pay. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Chanting “No contract, no peace,” roughly 100 health care workers held the picket line outside UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland on Monday, the sixth day of an open-ended strike over what they call an illegal plan to rip up their union contracts and slash take-home pay.
The nursing assistants, medical technicians, cooks and other workers represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers walked off the job last Wednesday in response to an “integration” proposal from UCSF, announced in January, to rehire most of them as University of California employees beginning next month. They are currently employed directly by the hospital.
As a result of the plan, many workers at the hospital and satellite clinics across the East Bay would be transferred to public sector unions that represent UC employees and work under new contracts that would require them to pay an average of $10,000 a year more toward health and retirement benefits, the union said.
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“I’ve been here for 24 years. And for whatever reasons, UCSF just decided they wanted to come in and bully us into becoming their employees, which makes no sense,” said Cameron Lewis, a shop steward who works in guest services at the hospital. “Now you’re telling me I have to go over there and start all over again? I’m 60 years old. I don’t have another 20 years in me.”
When UCSF became affiliated with the hospital in 2014, the company assured workers the change was in name only and wouldn’t impact their existing labor agreements, he said.
Hospital employees and supporters gather for a rally outside the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland on April 19, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
“Basically, they’re busting up our union, because our union has a better contract than what’s presently at UCSF,” Lewis said as he stood in the shadow of a giant inflatable rat named Scabby on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr Way and 52nd Street. “We fought for a lot of things with our union over the years that their unions are trying to get. So why would we want to go backwards?”
In a statement last week, UCSF called claims that employees were “being fired and rehired … simply false.”
“Every employee is being mapped to a position in the appropriate unit at UCSF,” the statement said.
In April, 98% of union members voted against integrating with UCSF, according to NUHW, which represents some 1,300 workers at the hospital. The union, which argues that the takeover plan is in violation of its contracts with the hospital, filed a motion to force arbitration as part of a last-ditch effort to block the move.
A court hearing on the motion is scheduled for Thursday, just over a week before the transition is set to take effect, on July 6.
NUHW president Sal Rosselli said that if the motion is denied, his union would appeal “and continue this struggle.”
“It’s horrible that these folks have to be on strike,” he said, calling UCSF’s plan “a Trumpian move” to force workers out of their union.
“Children’s Hospital is a community organization,” Rosselli said. “It’s a rare institution where members’ grandchildren and children work at the hospital. They take care of their kids at the hospital. And this forced integration by UCSF is putting all of that at risk.”
A spokesperson for UCSF said the company couldn’t comment on pending litigation, but argued that it had made “multiple good faith offers” to meet with the union to discuss transition concerns and “bargain its effects.”
“The Union has refused to conduct any effective bargaining,” Jess Berthold, the UCSF spokesperson, said in an email. “We are disappointed in NUHW’s decision to strike and disrupt the care we provide to our young patients at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and its clinics.”
Berthold said the hospital has taken steps to ensure that patients still have access to important critical care services during the strike, including the emergency department and operating rooms. And she said its Walnut Creek facility, which temporarily shut down last week, has partially reopened to in-person visits.
The strike follows a series of major health care labor battles across the country in recent years, including several actions this year alone at UC medical centers throughout California, where workers have staged short strikes over alleged unfair labor practices.
Employees and supporters gather for a rally outside the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland on April 19, 2023. Health care workers are set to strike again on Wednesday. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
For Maggie Lewis (no relation to Cameron), who has been a chef at the hospital for 25 years, the fight is about protecting the rights of the health care workers who have long served this community.
“It’s a shame what UCSF is trying to come over and do. It’s also illegal,” said Lewis, who was born and raised in Oakland and was treated at this hospital as a child. “You know, most of these people here, they’ve never had to pay for insurance. Now, you want them to pay for insurance. They can’t afford that.”
Lewis said she plans to retire at the end of this year, so the UCSF proposal would have little direct impact on her.
“But I still have to fight with my colleagues that I’m going to leave here,” she said. “I’m ex-military. ‘Leave no man behind,’ that’s always been my quote. So that’s my whole thing. I’m gonna fight to the end with my colleagues.”
Correction: UCSF did not acquire Children’s Hospital Oakland in 2014, as this article previously stated. Rather, the two institutions became affiliated that year.
