UC Berkeley News Brief
Strike continues at UC campuses, picketers rally at system headquarters
BERKELEY – Striking service and patient care workers, on Thursday, July 17, continued to focus their picketing efforts on the University of California headquarters in downtown Oakland, where approximately 300 union workers protested once again.
The protest is part of a planned five-day strike called by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Local 3299, which represents nearly 20,000 custodians, food service workers, bus drivers, groundskeepers, parking attendants, and patient care technicians at the 10 UC campuses and 5 medical centers. UC has been in negotiations with AFSCME over two separate contracts since last year.
At UC Berkeley, picket lines dwindled from a high of about 200 at the start of the week to about 30 on Wednesday and Thursday, as union members and protesters headed to the UC offices in downtown Oakland. Some UC Berkeley employees who work in the campus’s residence halls had returned to work on Thursday and construction work around the campus had returned to near normal staffing levels, though some sub-contractors had not returned to construction sites.
Shuttle bus service to campus perimeter destinations, such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, continues to operate at close-to-normal levels. Delays to trash pick-up continue. Custodial and some dining services are being covered by other workers. Scheduled classes are running as normal.
In all, UC Berkeley officials estimate that about 300 employees have not reported to work, and it remains unclear exactly how many are participating in the strike. The campus has more than 9,000 staff employees and of those about 940 are members of the striking service employees unit.
On July 11, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney issued a temporary restraining order at the request of the Public Employment Relations Board, which issued a complaint against AFSCME for bad-faith bargaining, failing to give adequate notice of a planned strike, and for encouraging employees to participate in a strike against UC facilities even though their absence from work would clearly endanger the public's safety, particularly at the medical centers.
Despite the judge’s order, AFSCME leaders moved forward with the job action, which is expected to last through Friday.