After nearly two weeks on the picket line, employees at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital – Oakland ended their strike this week. The move comes days after a judge ruled against their union’s emergency appeal to halt an “integration” plan that will bring the East Bay hospital’s staff into the UCSF universe.
The health system, which operates another children’s hospital in San Francisco, took over the facility in 2014 but is only now transitioning around 2,800 workers to UC employment. Employees say the shift will result in pay cuts for many workers.
“Our strike is over, but our fight is still going on,” said Willie Williams, an orthopedic technician at the hospital. “We’re proud that we have taken this stand for each other and for the care that we provide East Bay kids. We know that what UCSF is proposing will push out long-tenured caregivers, and we’re still determined to reverse it.”
With employees back at work, and operations back to normal, some parents of patients are worried about how the next steps in the “integration” plan UCSF presented in January will affect the quality and accessibility of their kids’ care.
Porchea Maximo has been going to Children’s Hospital in Oakland for 14 years, since her daughter was transferred there months after she was born prematurely.
“Children’s has been the reason she’s still alive. Children’s has been there through whatever,” Maximo said. “That’s like our family right there.”
Some workers have said they may have to find new jobs and she is concerned her family will lose caregivers who have gotten to know the family over the past decade.
Employees of the hospital are set to become UCSF employees, represented by a new union, on Sunday, July 6.
“The majority of Oakland staff are transitioning to UC employment – only a small number have elected to retire or take severance before the transition – and we are confident in our ability to preserve the same level of access that patients have today,” a UCSF spokesperson wrote in an email this week.
“This transition is about increasing access for more families in the East Bay and about growing services,” the spokesperson said, pointing to plans to build a new building in Oakland, which would add over 100 beds when it is completed, expected to be done in 2031.
The National Union of Healthcare Workers had asked a judge to file an emergency injunction delaying the changes, but the judge denied the union’s motion. The union is now hoping other legal challenges they are pursuing, in federal court and with the National Labor Relations Board, will succeed. On July 17, a judge will hear the union’s motion to compel UCSF to arbitration.
The union, which has represented employees at the East Bay institution for over a decade, says the move will cancel their contracts unilaterally, switching employees from a union they chose to join in 2012, to another that they did not select. The union says employees can expect an average of $10,000 less in take-home pay.
UCSF has acknowledged that parallel positions in the health system come with lower take-home pay, because under the UCSF contract, employees will have to contribute to their own health insurance, something the hospital paid for under the NUHW contract. UCSF has said the employees will be getting other better benefits, like better retirement benefits, in the new contract.
Bry’ana Wallace, an Oakland resident, has been a frequent visitor to the hospital, where her four-year-old son has received care throughout his childhood. “I found Children’s Hospital very convenient, even when we didn’t have medical coverage,” Wallace said. And she has had positive experiences. “The employees are super, super compassionate when it comes to caring for the kids.”
While she says she stands in solidarity with the workers, she has noticed long wait time for certain clinics and appointments, and worries that could get worse. “My son was treated with the utmost care, so it would be devastating for this change to happen and then folks start to leave,” she said.
Maximo, also an Oakland resident, is worried about the possibility of more services being shifted to facilities in San Francisco. “We cannot just travel to San Francisco if we get sick,” she said. “We don’t have transportation like that, but Children’s Hospital has been awesome.”