The mission of the University of California to carry out excellent research and to educate and serve the public is best served when all of its workers are fairly compensated, have good benefits, and employment security. Under such conditions, workers have good morale and less employee turnover.
We are very concerned with UC administrators’ current treatment of AFSCME 3299, which represents service and patient care workers, in the UC system.
Contract negotiations with AFSCME 3299 are currently stalled while administrators are refusing to raise workers’ wages, threatening to raise their healthcare premiums, and refusing to address their concerns regarding racial, gender, and income inequities, and employment security related to the increased privatization, or outsourcing, of university jobs.
On Wednesday, November 13, AFSCME 3299 workers at UCR and throughout the UC system will be going on strike for Unfair Labor Practices related to UC administrators’ illegal outsourcing of university jobs. ULP documents suggest that outsourcing–the contracting out to private employers– of university service and patient care jobs has increased by as much as 52% since 2016.
We believe that UC administrators’ treatment of unions undermines the public mission and reputation of our university; they are also symptomatic of broader issues in the UC budget and governance that, if unaddressed, threaten to worsen employment, research, and learning conditions and raise students’ tuition. We believe it is vital that we keep the UC public and stand strong in support of our fellow UC workers, who carry out essential service and patient care jobs at our university.
At UCR, AFSCME 3299 employees will be picketing between the ARTS building and the CHASS building at UCR. We call on all faculty to join students and workers on the picket line and to not purchase anything on campus that day so that UC administrators and negotiators seriously consider the consequences of privatizing university employment and treating their workers so unfairly. We must also ask UC administrators: on whose behalf are UC negotiators bargaining?