LA JOLLA — Close to 40,000 UC Hospital system workers hit the picket lines on Wednesday for a two-day strike over higher wages and benefits.
However, the health care system says it has met the union's original pay demands while increasing health care credits and adding more time off.
In La Jolla, more than 1,000 employees including pharmacy techs, food workers and housekeepers rallied during the noon hour for a boisterous picket.
"Instead of bargaining at the bargaining table, they are implementing higher medical costs onto all of these workers and all of our families," said Isaac Zamora, a respiratory
therapist who added he's a member of the union's bargaining team. "They did it unilaterally, and they walked away from the bargaining table."
He added that the UC System has been investing
in buildings but not front-line workers.
"It's a staffing crisis, a wage crisis and a housing crisis," he said. "What they are paying us is pushing us to other counties and is pushing us into Mexico sometimes too."
The hospital system on its website https://labor.universityofcalifornia.edu/afscme/said bargaining began in January, and UC has offered dozens of proposals and counterproposals to AFSCME Local 3299, which represents the workers.
Among those are at least a $25 minimum wage and at least a 5 percent across-the-board pay raise, which the system said met the union's original pay demands.
Workers were also offered up to $100 a month in healthcare premium credits and given more vacation and sick leave, as well as Juneteenth as another paid holiday.
The UC System also disputes accusations that it has engaged in bad faith bargaining and reassured patients it would feel minimal
impact from the two-day strike.
However, one patient told ABC 10 News that's not what happened to her.
"I could hear them all the way inside and it was hard to hear at the reception desk because you could hear everything out here," said Kathy Worrall of Chula Vista. "It's just disrespectful to the people who are here getting medical care."
Union workers say they will resume picketing at 6 a.m. on Thursday, and the strike is set to end at 11:59 p.m. that day.
