Organizing to Strike: How 20,000 California Workers Got Ready

Michael McGlenn is a clinical psychologist at the University of California-San Diego. Three years ago, feeling the pinch of dues, he looked into dropping the union. He felt that “the best I could do was see the person in front of me and care for them,” he said, and as far as he could see, the union had nothing to do with what happened in his office.

That was until a member organizer went to see him. They talked about how his ability to care for his patients was related to turnover and understaffing that could only be fixed through collective action. That conversation not only kept McGlenn in the University Professional and Technical Employees—years later, he is a leader on his campus.

UPTE (Communications Workers Local 9119) is a union of 20,000 research support, health care, professional, and technical employees spread over the 11 UC campuses, including dozens of hospitals. Members are occupational therapists, research assistants, clinical psychologists, physicians assistants, and IT specialists, among other titles.

The range of jobs and the geographic spread of worksites presents a challenge for building solidarity. But McGlenn’s personal transformation is part of a larger union transformation that will culminate November 20, when UPTE is set to begin a major strike.

HEADWINDS

It began when the Organizing for Power slate won a leadership election in 2021, with high hopes of mobilizing the full power of the union to win wages and benefits that could stem the tide of turnover and worker exhaustion.

They faced resistance from the incumbents they had unseated. The former president challenged the election results and filed charges against the entire slate. The new leaders were unable to access lists and contact information, because all this was on her personal email.

Undaunted, if knocked around a bit, the leaders kept reaching out to members, talking about workplace issues, and slowly changing the makeup of the executive board. At the union’s convention in 2022, they were able to add four new seats to the board and accelerate the change.

For Amy Fletcher, a researcher at UC Davis and UPTE treasurer, the difference in the new leadership was that before “we didn’t have an organizing model—just cold calling workers—but now we have a structure.”

Eventually they were able to pass an organizing plan for the next contract that called for hiring more staff and building an action network across the campuses. It squeaked through the executive board by only one vote. But since then, said Matthew Stephen, a physician’s assistant and co-chair of the UCSF chapter, “it snowballed.”

The plan started with conversations, and those took time.

“In some cases, we had to keep going back to people,” said Ursula Quinn, an occupational therapist and union vice president. “If a person is anti-union or hopeless, you can’t give up on them. There is so much going on in a person’s life. You have to take the time until they will be receptive to hearing from you.”

The contract action team used these conversations to identify workplace problems and untapped potential leaders—and to tackle these problems by helping the possible new leaders develop their own organizing skills.

It was arduous work: “There were three people I thought were leaders,” said Stephen, “and it took me nine months to realize they were not. I learned you cannot preordain who the right people are. You have to look at who shows up. Who the workers tell you is the leader.”

A long-neglected clause in the contract gave stewards one day off a month for union work. UPTE’s organizing plan seized on this clause and expanded how that time would be used. Staff and elected leaders recruited 100 unit reps, across every campus and all job classifications, whose work was to organize locally and stay in touch with one another.

Each unit rep would lead a network of site reps; each site rep would be the regular point of contact for 10 members on the job. This system and the worksite fights the union took on through it led to 30 percent growth in membership over the last two years.

RISING PARTICIPATION

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The next step was to activate this member-to-member network in a contract campaign.

“We started by asking members, ‘What are your three biggest priorities in the next contract fight?’” said Fletcher. “We were able to get thousands of people statewide to participate, because we already had leaders and members who had engaged in workplace fights.

“Worksite reps talked to co-workers. We collated those [reports] and then did a bargaining survey. At each step we saw tremendous growth in participation.”

Participation grew from 8,000 members completing the survey to 9,000 voting to affirm the contract platform. At the University of California-San Francisco, the first location to hold a strike authorization vote, 98 percent voted in favor, with turnout of 75 percent, much higher than turnout in the union’s past strike votes.

The strike is over the employer's unfair labor practices—refusing to provide requested information, and unilaterally increasing workers' health care costs.

PATIENTS THE ON SAME PAGE

The top grievances are high turnover and burnout due to low pay and limited career ladders. The union is demanding annual salary increases, opportunities for career advancement, and more vacation time to redress the increasing stress of the work.

Union members say patients feel the turnover in understaffing and inconsistent care. “Access to more care, access to resources, access to more staffing,” said McGlenn, “all things I want for our patients, we can only get collectively.”

For Quinn, past strikes presented a dilemma—was she really going to leave her patients to strike in her own interests? But this time she sees the connection between what her patients experience and what the union is fighting for.

“I realized that, besides their mental health issues, patients have all of these other issues,” she said, “like not being able to afford housing, or having to work so many hours that you couldn’t get the care you needed. I saw more clearly how difficult a person’s life can be if they don’t have these things we were asking UCLA to provide us.”

Inspired by the United Auto Workers’ Stand-Up Strike, not all campuses will be striking at once. The chapters at UCSF will go first with a two-day strike November 20 and 21.

On other campuses, members are signing strike pledge cards, saying they are ready to walk out when needed to build pressure on the administration.

AFSCME Local 3299, which represents 37,000 patient care and service workers at UC, will also be striking November 20 and 21. AFSCME members will strike at all 10 UC campuses and five medical centers.

Away from the bargaining table, UC announced increases in health insurance costs, which it cannot legally do outside of negotiations.

Fletcher said, “we will really be able to gum up work because of the diversity of staff. We are pharmacists, OTs, social workers, research assistants, and we are all over campus.”

Stephen is confident that the strike will succeed because “we’ve been building community and solidarity,” he said. “There is a physician’s assistant at every worksite at every institution that I can call up and talk to. We are bonded. It is so satisfying.”

Corrections: This article has been updated to correct the number of UPTE members statewide (20,000, not 13,000) and the location of the first strike authorization vote.