UCSC patient care workers, students join two-day UC strike

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION-TV) -- UC Santa Cruz workers joined the thousands protesting what they say are unfair labor practices at all UC campuses and medical centers.

The two-day, UC systemwide strike included the staff of the UCSC medical center as part of the AFSCME Local 3299 including physician assistants, pharmacists, optometrists, and mental health workers.

“Instead of addressing the decline in real wages that has fueled the staff exodus at UC Medical Centers and Campuses at the bargaining table, UC has chosen to illegally implement arbitrary rules aimed at silencing workers who are raising concerns while limiting their access to union representatives,” AFSCME Local 3299 President Michael Avant said.

One protestor at the strike told KION "we need to be treated as workers, as first-line workers, not as second-class workers. We are equal."

KION reached out to UC Santa Cruz for a response to the striking workers and their demands but has not received a response.

In a release before the strikes, the University did say that it supports protected free speech activities such as protests.

"The right to free speech in a university includes the right to acts of peaceful dissent, protests in peaceable assembly, and orderly, nondisruptive demonstrations which include non-obstructive picketing."

AFSCME Local 3299 has also voluntarily exempted dozens of critical care workers from strike activity with a patient protection task force should the need arise to support emergency patients.

The strikes are expected to last until Midnight on Thursday, February 27.