The University of California and the California Nurses Association reached a tentative four-year agreement for nearly 24,000 nurses that includes “meaningful pay and benefit increases” across the university’s 19 medical centers and campuses, the two sides announced on Sunday, Nov. 16.
As part of the terms of the deal, CNA canceled its two-day, systemwide strike, which was planned for Nov. 17-18 at UC campuses.
UC nurses will vote on the tentative agreement later this week, CNA said in a statement.
“We’re grateful to the nurses and the CNA bargaining team for their partnership and shared commitment to what matters most: our patients and the UC community,” said Missy Matella, UC’s associate vice president for systemwide employee and labor relations. “This strong, forward-looking deal honors the vital role nurses play in delivering exceptional care and advancing UC’s public service mission.”
Kristan Delmarty, an RN at UCLA Santa Monica, and a member of the UC bargaining team and CNA’s board of directors, said that CNA’s priority was to ensure UC nurses were given the resources to care for patients and nurses after “years of short-staffing and under-resourcing.”
She said that CNA achieved its goal in the negotiations, and now “stand together with our AFSCME colleagues, whose essential work demands the same resources guaranteed by a fair contract.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents 37,481 service and patient care technical workers at UC, is still in talks with UC negotiators. That union’s contract also expired last year.
Thousands of nurses plan to join the picket lines for AFSCME on Monday and Tuesday, according to Delmarty.
“UC’s continued tone deafness to the affordability crisis plaguing its lowest wage workers is disappointing, but not surprising,” said AFSCME Local 3299 spokesman Todd Stenhouse, in a statement to the Southern California News Group on Sunday.
UC spokeswoman Heather Hansen said Sunday that AFSCME has not presented any “substantive counterproposals” since April.
CNA becomes the second major union to reach a tentative agreement with UC this month.
On Nov. 8, the University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America Local 9119, which represents 19,664 healthcare, research and technical professionals, agreed to a tentative deal. Late last week, UPTE-CWA workers began voting on ratification of the contract. Those results are not yet available.
Bargaining began in June 2024 ahead of the union’s contract expiration on Oct. 31, 2024. That union’s agreement provides a roughly 28% pay bump over the next four years, pension contributions, caps on health care premium increases, and improvements to career advancement steps and work-life balance.