University of California strike averted (20,000 UC workers)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2008/05/26/daily38.html

Friday, May 30, 2008 - 11:02 AM PDT
Sacramento Business Journal - East Bay Business Times

University of California service and patient-care workers won't strike June 4 and 5 as previously announced, according to a joint statement issued Thursday by the university administration and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Instead, the two sides have agreed to follow the recommendation of the State Mediation and Conciliation Service and return to the bargaining table to continue talks on new labor contracts for the more than 20,000 UC workers AFSCME represents.

The negotiations were set to resume at 10 a.m. Friday, with the assistance of a neutral third-party mediator.

The strike would have hit medical centers at University of California Davis, UCSF, UCLA, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, as well as all 10 UC campuses: Berkeley, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Davis, Merced, Irvine, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego. The union also represents workers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

UC and AFSCME have been in negotiations for the last 10 months over a new contract for more than 11,000 UC patient care technical employees, and for the last seven months for a new contract for 8,000 UC service employees. These workers pereform a wide variety of jobs ranging from medical technologists who take X-rays and medical assistants who clean wounds to custodians who clean the hospitals and campus dorms.