UC depends on us – it’s time we could depend on UC

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OPINION – A few weeks ago,  40,000 University of California workers went on strike  across the state. All were members of AFSCME Local 3299, the people who clean patient rooms, prepare hospital meals, keep labs safe, move patients through care facilities, maintain campus infrastructure, and ensure students live and learn in functioning environments.

We did not take striking lightly. Most of us work in healthcare. We know what it means to show up in a crisis, to fill the gaps when systems buckle, and to put the needs of others ahead of our own. That’s exactly what we did during the COVID Pandemic, and every day since.  But we are also at a breaking point.

Frontline UC workers have been struggling for years. We work understaffed at an institution that has seen its staff vacancy rate triple since the pandemic.  Our last contract expired more than a year ago, and we are working for poverty wages that have been far outpaced by the cost of rent, food, gas, and childcare.  Many are forced to sleep in our cars or on a friend’s couch because we can’t afford to live near our jobs.

All the while, we’ve seen our employer shell out billions of dollars on massive raises and housing subsidies for its highest paid employees—and on acquisitions of new facilities.

Left behind, more than 13,000 UC service and patient care workers, nearly one-third of this critical workforce, have left their jobs in the past three years.  Not because they weren’t good employees.  Not because they weren’t committed to public service.  But rather because they simply couldn’t afford to stay.

Frontline UC service and patient care workers do not play marginal roles. We keep operating rooms sterile and answer the call button when your family members are in pain.  We keep residence halls open and feed students. We are the technicians, custodians, food service workers, patient care assistants, and maintenance crews who make campuses habitable and hospitals safe.

The UC community cannot function without us, yet the top UC brass continues to treat us as disposable.  It showers its top wage earners with money and gold-plated benefits at the expense of its frontline workers, while publicly making claims of financial distress.

But do UC’s claims of financial hardship hold water?  According to UC’s latest financial statements, its revenues have nearly doubled over the last decade.  So have its investment assets.  Its unrestricted cash reserves—surplus campus “funds functioning as endowments”—have increased by more than 500% and now top $10 billion.  Last year alone, UC’s Medical Centers made more than $2 billion in net operating revenue, and its investments made another $332 million.

On May 13, the UC Regents Investment Committee heard it this way from its Chief Investments Officer Jagdeep Baccher:

“Our assets are double since 2014.  We’ve gone from $93 billion to $188 billion.  We went up $2 billion just yesterday and hit $190 billion.  The first half of 2025 has been very strong.  We are in a very good place…I was tempted to offer Harvard a loan.”

Meanwhile, research shows that UC’s frontline workers are making nearly 10% less in real, inflation adjusted wages than they made seven years ago.  They don’t have access to UC’s housing assistance programs, and the share of these workers that would otherwise be income eligible for limited federal housing subsidies has tripled.  Most don’t get this help because demand for subsidies far outpaces supply.

That is not the California we believe in. It’s not the higher education system the public thinks it funds. And it is not a sustainable model for running hospitals, research facilities, or universities.  When caregivers are forced out by poverty wages, patients wait longer, errors escalate, burnout spreads, and the entire system weakens.

This strike was not a retreat from UC’s mission. It was a demand that UC fulfill it.

Liz Perlman is the Executive Director of AFSCME Local 3299, representing more than 40,000 University of California Service and Patient Care Technical workers.