What the AFSCME Strikes Tells Students About the UC System

Coverage from UCSC: AFSCME strikes against UC system’s unfair labor practices and a recent history of the university’s investment into real estate companies pushing for higher rent

On November 20th, 2024, a series of strikes led by labor union AFSCME 3299 organized on University of California’s ten campuses throughout the state, lasting two days.

The union’s Patient Care and Service contracts with the UC system both expired in 2024 and instead of negotiating with the union on a new contract, the university acted in ‘bad-faith bargaining’ by refusing to engage in any productive dialogue. AFSCME voted to press the Unfair Labor Practice charges with 99% approval from their members as a result on October 10th of 2023, accusing University of California of increasing the price of their workers health care premiums by 9-11%.

The ULP charge also called out the university system’s representatives for failing to deliver critical information during their negotiations and presenting proposals that the labor union had already rejected months prior. These dramatic swells in healthcare costs communicates the UC system’s disregard for jeopardizing the health of their campus workers who have to deal with diseases like cancer and diabetes.

AFSCME organizer Rebecca Gilpas reading the terms of their ULP charge against the University of California.

“UC workers have to sleep in their cars. They have to commute two to three hours each way because they cannot afford to live near their work,” said AFSCME organizer Rebecca Gilpas through a megaphone, addressing the large crowd gathered around the intersection.

At six in the morning a core group of union members gathered at the base of UC Santa Cruz’s campus and began to set up shop. Tables full of flyers about why the union was striking, canopies shading the families of members who had shown up to support and white folding tables loaded with free food that service workers and the Young Democratic Socialists of America provided for those in attendance.

Students and student-led activist groups like the YDSA, the Santa Cruz Revolutionary Student Organization and Students for Justice in Palestine showing up to the strike is indicative of a growing frustration festering in young people about not only the pay and dignity shown by employers but also about how the tuition they pay to the University of California is being used.

The YDSA and Santa Cruz Revolutionary Student Organization showing support at AFSCME strike with handmade posters saying “Workers and oppressed people of the world unite!” and “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido”.

In February of 2023, the University of California poured 4 billion dollars into the real-estate trust BREIT of the infamous American investment company Blackstone. Residents of California are all too familiar with the firm as Blackstone gained a large portion of its assets from buying up property in the state and splitting the money made from tenants among shareholders, incentivizing charging tenants more than U.S. rent agreement averages throughout the country.

In an acquisition made in February 2024, Blackstone purchased the real estate company Tricon Residential, another controversial decision as that company was also scrutinized for raising rent on tenants exorbitantly. Blackstone is deliberately worsening the affordable housing crisis in America for the financial gain of a small majority of shareholders and investors, and the University of California is complicit in that.

“UC Chancellors and executives get free or subsidized housing, and many just got raises averaging 250,000 dollars per year,” said Gilpas.

So how, then, is the UC system planning on fixing the housing crisis for its students and making education more affordable for people who wish to further their academic career? How do they plan lessening the financial burden on the shoulders of their own university employees? The answer is: it's not.

AFSCME 3299 has organized strikes not only in response to their labor contract not being negotiated but also in response to the way the university system chooses to divert their funds.

Instead of listening to the voices of the youth they claim to encourage, the University of California funds companies that have a direct negative impact on those they employ and teach. They invest billions into groups with ties to weapons manufacturing for the IDF in Israel and are actively fueling brutal and senseless murder of Palestinian children.

Their response, or lack thereof, to AFSCME only helps prove the claim that even in institutions claiming to encourage democracy and critical thought, corporate greed is still evergreen.

The resistance to that apathy, however, is also eternal.

Students, unions and other aspects of the working class have not succumbed to the hopelessness that corporations trying to maintain capitalism employ on the masses. AFSCME has promised to continue its fight until all aspects of their proposals are met, students have continued to protest despite the brutality inflicted on them by police during their encampment protests in support of Palestine, and the words “the workers united will never be divided” will continue to be chanted at picket lines across the country.