UC Workers United
Perspectives from the Rank and File workers of the University of California:our struggles to fight outsourcing, to protect our pension, & get decent wages.
Judge Finds UC Guilty of Unlawful Union-Busting in Huge Victory for Workers’ Rights!
teamsters2010.org/2023/02/03/rally-to-protect-public-safety-and-union-jobs-2/
A California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) Judge has issued a decision blasting University of California for multiple violations of California labor law by sending mass communications that interfered with UC employees’ rights to form or join a union!
In an extremely rare move, the Judge also ordered the University of California to pay Teamsters Local 2010 legal fees, finding that UC’s violations were intentional and egregious.
This decision exposes UC’s scandalous practice of using public funds for illegal Union-busting activity. Every worker should have the freedom to join together in a Union without employer interference, yet UC managers repeatedly violated the law because they thought they could get away with it. Now they are on the hook for the Union’s attorney fees, in addition to the cost of their own high-priced attorneys. Hopefully UC will learn the lesson and start following the law and respecting workers’ rights.
Jason Rabinowitz, Secretary-Treasurer
Our Union filed the initial unfair labor practice charge with PERB in May 2019, after the UC sent out a series of communications containing “Information for Administrative Professionals.” The employees who received the communication were all members of the unrepresented job classifications, similar in duties to current CX Teamsters, that Teamsters 2010 had been working to organize into the Union.
PERB found that the UC’s communication unlawfully discouraged workers from exercising their right to join the Union by using false and misleading statements to denigrate unions and mislead employees about the benefits of unionization.
The decision orders UC to post a notice in all workplaces where Administrative Professionals work explaining that the UC was found in violation of state labor law.
Read the full decision here >>
Under SB 931, a new state law sponsored by Teamsters and effective on January 1, 2023, any future violations of this nature by the UC will be subject to fines of up to $100,000 per complaint and $1,000 per affected employee.
“This case shows why we needed to pass SB 931, in order to stop Union-busting employers from intentionally violating labor law with impunity,” Secretary-Treasurer Rabinowitz said. “With this new law, and our legal victory in this case, UC and other public employers will think twice before they engage in illegal Union-busting.”
teamsters2010.org
A California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) Judge has issued a decision blasting University of California for multiple violations of California labor law by sending mass communications that …
UC Berkeley spent $6.6M to close People’s Park in January
The university spent $972,000 on shipping containers and $3.77 million to hire, feed and lodge law enforcement, including $1.5 million in police overtime.
www.berkeleyside.org/2024/02/28/uc-berkeley-spent-6-6m-close-peoples-park-january
By Supriya Yelimeli
Feb. 28, 2024, 4:35 p.m.
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A view looking east on Dwight Way shows several people in work gear milling around a barrier of double-stacked shipping containers near an entrance to People's Park.
Workers completing the shipping container barrier they began installing around People’s Park on Jan. 4. Credit: Nico Savidge, Berkeleyside
UC Berkeley said it spent $6.62 million for UC police, mutual aid law enforcement, lodging, meals, supplies and engineering in an operation to block off People’s Park in January.
The university released the information Wednesday in response to Berkeleyside’s request under the state Public Records Act, and said the numbers reflect invoices received up to Feb. 14. Additional invoices are due from agencies that provided mutual aid, like UC Irvine police, the university said.
Cal also shared the information in a public news release, and said the university has spent about $4.8 million since the beginning of 2022 to purchase temporary housing options for people living at the park. That includes hotel rooms offered to residents at the Rodeway Inn and the Quality Inn.
The university has not confirmed how many law enforcement officers from UCPD and mutual aid were called to the scene and said they won’t disclose the details for security reasons.
UC Berkeley police entered the park with hundreds of mutual aid law enforcement officers the night of Jan. 3 to shut down the square block and wall it off with double-stacked shipping containers. They made the move pending a state Supreme Court decision over whether they can build a 1,100-bed student and supportive housing project at the location.
In August 2022, the university said it spent roughly $4 million in an attempt to close down the park. They were deterred by large protests, vandalism of construction equipment and occupation of the park.
The university broke down this year’s costs in the records request:
$2.85 million to build a perimeter, including $972,000 for shipping containers, $1.27 million for gates, equipment, lighting and supervision and $515,000 for engineering services and surveying.
$3.77 million for law enforcement, including $849,000 for lodging, $281,000 for meals, $1.47 million for UCPD overtime and $633,000 for outside security services.
The park remains under 24-hour security surveillance, with APEX security officers posted at the corners of the shipping container perimeter.
Activists opposed to construction at the park protested for nearly a week on Telegraph Avenue, and have popped up efforts to provide mutual aid for frequent visitors to the park in the nearby area of the Dwight Way triangle.
The university expects to spend over $400 million on the People’s Park student and supportive housing project. The supportive housing, included in the total, is estimated to cost $90 million based on projections from RCD, a previous developer who pulled out of the project, according to Cal.
The UC Regents first approved the student housing portion of the plan in 2021 with a price tag of $312 million. To date, the university says it has spent about $16.1 million.
The UC said costs are expected to surpass $400 million due to construction costs and court delays.
The state Supreme Court has not yet scheduled a hearing for the ongoing court case, but a date is expected in the spring.
Correction: It was incorrectly reported that UC Berkeley expects to spend over $400 million for the entire student project. The university expects to spend over $400 million on the student housing, in addition to supportive housing.
UC Berkeley spent $6.6M to close People's Park in January
www.berkeleyside.org
The university spent $972,000 on shipping containers and $3.77 million to hire, feed and lodge police, including $1.5 million for overtime.
Baltimore port workers are ‘living in a dream’ as harbor remains blocked
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/28/baltimore-port-workers-jobs-bridge-collapse/
By Tim Craig
Updated March 28, 2024 at 7:54 p.m. EDT|Published March 28, 2024 at 5:33 p.m. EDT
Bartender Melissa Hayes, right, talks with tug boat captain Dino Martinez, left, at the Muddy Beaver in Maryland. (Michael Robinson Chávez for The Washington Post)
Dino Martinez, a tugboat captain in Baltimore’s harbor, feels as if he’s “living in a dream” since the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridgesent a shock wave of fear and uncertainty through thousands of workers who rely on the port for their livelihoods.
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But on Wednesday, less than 48 hours after the bridge tumbled into the Patapsco River, Martinez could whip out of his cellphone and see that help was on the way. Using a mobile telephone app that monitors maritime traffic, Martinez identified specialized engineering ships already sailing up Chesapeake Bay, the first steps in what will be a long process to clear debris from the shipping channel and get one of country’s busiest ports back online.
“Right now, the Port of Baltimore is totally closed, and there is really no time frame that you can put on it being reopened,” Martinez said as he sipped his beer at a dive bar in Sparrows Point, Md. “I feel sorry for everybody. Everyone is greatly affected by this situation … But help is on the way, and I think it’s going to be okay.”
Throughout working-class neighborhoods that hug the shoreline of the Patapsco River in southeastern Baltimore County, scores of workers are now trying to make similar calculations about how long they may be out work. Already, rumors are flying between bar stools and community chat groups that layoffs may be imminent as more than 8,000 men and women have jobs directly tied to the Port of Baltimore.
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Baltimore bridge collapse
Yet, amid a pledge from President Bidenand administration officials that a massive infusion of federal help is on the way, there is now cautious optimism that operations at the port will resume before it really decimates workers’ livelihoods.
Authorities are turning their focus to “salvage” operations to remove wreckage from the Patapsco River after the massive container ship, Dali, caused Baltimore’s Key Bridge to collapse. (Jonathan Newton for The Washington Post)
At the White House on Wednesday, both Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter W. Gautier said reopening the shipping channel and the port are now the key focus of the nation’s recovery efforts. Between $100 million to $200 million in goods come through every day and at least $2 million in wages are at stake every day the port is closed, officials said.
“The Coast Guard highest priority now is restoring the waterway for shipping, stabilizing the motor vessel Dali, and removing it from the site,” Gautier said.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) echoed federal officials, saying in a news conference this week that reopening the port was now the state’s top priority. On Thursday, the state requested and received an initial payment of $60 million for early recovery and clean up.
“I do not know what the total costs are going to be. I do not yet know what the full timeline is going to be,” Moore said. “But the thing that I do know is that the task in front of us, it will be real and it will be daunting. Despite this task ahead of being daunting, I can tell you right now our resolve is unshaken. We will get to completion. We will do it together.”
In the coming days, assets from the U.S. Navy are expected to arrive in Baltimore to examine how the waterways can be reopened. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also announced it plans to deploy 1,100 engineers and specialists to help with recovery efforts.
Efforts are also underway to ship in large cranes and other heavy equipment to begin pulling apart the debris once the National Safety Transportation Board completes the initial phase of its investigation. The first wave of the equipment arrived near the accident scene in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday.
“They have already started turning the wheels on the salvage” operation, said Martinez, who expects his tugboat will be used to help position cranes and salvage equipment in the water. “They are getting bids on what it will cost and how it will get done.”
But throughout southeastern Baltimore County, where many longshoremen reside, there remains considerable unease as people wonder how long they may be out work.
Patrons, including many workers at the Port of Baltimore, gather for an after work beer at the Muddy Beaver, a gathering point for tug boat drivers and longshoreman who have deep concerns about their futures in the wake of the collapse of the Key Bridge. (Michael Robinson Chávez for The Washington Post)
Many longshoremen and other port workers frequently gather at a bar in Sparrows Point called the Muddy Beaver. The bar traces its roots back to 1934, when up to 30,000 local residents used to work at the now shuttered Bethlehem Steel plant. The steelworkers would cash their paychecks at a neighboring store and then walk over to the bar and crack open a beer.
The Muddy Beaver, where taxidermy lines the walls, is still known for opening at 7 a.m. to accommodate shift workers. It also has one of Baltimore County’s oldest and most lenient liquor licenses — patrons joke they are even allowed to pour their own shots behind the bar.
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On Wednesday afternoon, when about a dozen men including Martinez were already seated the bar, Darlene Chance, 72, brought in canned goods from a local food bank. Chance, who has family who works at the port, said the community is already bracing for the possibility that there could be widespread layoffs if the port does not reopen soon.
“I definitely think a lot of them longshoremen will be laid off,” Chance said. “But I really think we will be fine and survive because we are a tough community, and a very strong community, and we will all work together here to get through this.”
One man at the bar said his son is a longshoreman at the port, but he asked not to be identified by name because he and his son share the same name. The man had just gotten off the phone with this son, who told him union leaders are already guiding employees on how they can file unemployment assistance claims.
A man walks to the entrance of the Muddy Beaver bar. (Michael Robinson Chávez for The Washington Post)
“I said, ‘Son, you are going to be out of work through no fault of your own’,” the man said. “But I told him to him to get ready, because when this is cleared up, you better bring a sleeping bag [to work] because there will be so much work you won’t be able to get out of the port. It’s only a matter of time.”
Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, confirmed that union leaders are already coaching members through the unemployment process including setting up a dedicated telephone line offering advice. Cowan said 85 percent of his members are “daily hires” who only get paid “when a ship is in” dock.
“So we are waiting, and feel like we are out here in limbo, but we feel we are going to get through this, said Cowan, who noted that port has been operational for centuries and has had a unionized workforce since the 1880s. “We are going to keep on trucking forward.”
At the Muddy Beaver, the sense of optimism that the region’s struggles will be relatively short-lived is driven by their belief that the nation — and the world — cannot live without the Port of Baltimore. They note the port is a national leader for imports of automobiles, sugar and farm equipment and for exporting coal.
“The port will survive. They are not going to eliminate the port,” said Matt Temple, 51. “It’s just going to be a matter of how long it takes and who will pay for it.”
But after he finished shift as longshoreman at Consol Energy’s coal yard at the Port of Baltimore, David Brothel isn’t sure he and his colleagues can survive a port closure that lasts more than a few months.
Livestream video shows the moment the cargo ship Dali crashed into Baltimore's Key Bridge early March 26. (Video: Streamtime Live Via Youtube)
“I know most of my colleagues are worried that the government is not going to step up and do what they say they are going to do, as quickly and speedy as they say they are going to do,” Brothel, 40, said as he was passing through Sparrows Point on Wednesday. “I don’t think it is going to happen as fast as they say.”
What’s at stake, Brothel says, is well-paying jobs that drive the economies of communities throughout the East Coast. Some longshoremen make close to $200,000 a year working up to 70 hours a week, Brothel said.
If ships can’t collect the coal, Brothel said there will be a cascading impact on jobs at the coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
“Once our yards are full, you can’t bring anymore in,” said Brothel. “So that stops all production up north, and unless they can stockpile that coal somewhere else, they can’t dig any more out of the ground.”
Brothel said a similar supply blockage occurred during the pandemic, when Consol’s coal yard went a month or two without accommodating new trains or ships.
For now, however, Brothel plans to just buckle in and wait it out. But he said the clock was already ticking.
“I know I can last three months,” he said. “But if this doesn’t clear up in three months, I may have to transfer to be a longshoreman in another state — maybe Texas, maybe Florida.”
Baltimore port workers are ‘living in a dream’ as harbor remains blocked
www.washingtonpost.com
Baltimore port workers worry about layoffs, jobs after bridge collapse.
Strategies for Community Colleges and Beyond: Taking on Tiers and Fighting Cutbacks – March 23, 2024
War and Illness Could Kill 85,000 Gazans in 6 Months
Even under the most optimistic scenario, an immediate cease-fire, an additional 6,500 Gazans could perish, scientists estimated.
An escalation of the war in Gaza could lead to the deaths of 85,000 Palestinians from injuries and disease over the next six months, in the worst of three situations that prominent epidemiologists have modeled in an effort to understand the potential future death toll of the conflict.
These fatalities would be in addition to the more than 29,000 deaths in Gaza that local authorities have attributed to the conflict since it began in October. The estimate represents “excess deaths,” above what would have been expected had there been no war.
In a second scenario, assuming no change in the current level of fighting or humanitarian access, there could be an additional 58,260 deaths in the enclave over the next six months, according to the researchers, from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
That figure could climb to 66,720 if there were outbreaks of infectious disease such as cholera, their analysis found.
Even in the best of the three possibilities that the research team described — an immediate and sustained cease-fire with no outbreak of infectious disease — another 6,500 Gazans could die over the next six months as a direct result of the war, the analysis found.
The population of the Gaza Strip before the war was 2.2 million.
“This is not a political message or advocacy,” said Dr. Francesco Checchi, professor of epidemiology and international health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“We simply wanted to put it at the front of people’s minds and on the desks of decision makers,” he added, “so that it can be said afterward that when these decisions were taken, there was some available evidence on how this would play out in terms of lives.”
Dr. Checchi and his colleagues estimated the projected excess deaths from health data that was available for Gaza before the war began and from that collected through more than four months of fighting.
Their study considers deaths from traumatic injuries, infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal causes, and noncommunicable diseases for which people can no longer receive medication or treatment, such as dialysis.
Dr. Checchi said the analysis made it possible to quantify the potential impact of a cease-fire in lives. “The decisions that are going to be taken over the next few days and weeks matter hugely in terms of the evolution of the death toll in Gaza,” he said.
The projected 6,500 deaths even with a cease-fire is predicated on the assumption there will not be epidemics of infectious disease. With an outbreak of cholera, measles, polio or meningitis, that figure would be 11,580, said Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Hopkins Center for the Humanitarian Health and an author of the research, which has not been peer-reviewed.
While it is obvious that a military escalation would bring additional casualties, he added, policymakers should be cognizant of the range in the number of deaths that these scenarios indicate.
“We hope to bring some reality to it,” Dr. Spiegel said. “This is 85,000 additional deaths in a population where 1.2 percent of that population has already been killed.”
Patrick Ball, an expert on quantitative analysis of deaths in conflict who was not involved in the research, said it was unusual to see such a rigorous effort to calculate the potential humanitarian cost of an ongoing war.
“The paper illuminates this conflict in a way that we haven’t had in any prior conflicts,” said Dr. Ball, who is the director of research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a nonprofit organization. “It illuminates the probable costs in human lives and human suffering of different kinds of future actions that are under human control.”
“People are going to make decisions that are going to lead to one of these three scenarios, or some complex mix of them, and this gives us a sense of what the likely outcomes of those decisions are,” he added.
The analysis projects that fatalities from traumatic injuries in Gaza over the next six months will be distributed across all ages and genders.
“Forty-three percent of the trauma deaths occur among females, and 42 percent are among children under 19 years,” the paper says, which “reflects the intensity and widespread nature of bombardment.”
Even with an immediate cease-fire, war-related deaths would continue, according to the analysis. The toll includes deaths of people who succumb to previous injuries or who are hurt by unexploded ordnance, deaths of babies and women for whom complex care in childbirth is not possible, and deaths of undernourished children who are unable to fight off infections such as pneumonia.
“I don’t think people realize how long it will take for that to change,” Dr. Spiegel said.
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Anthem and UC Health showdown highlights risks of health care consolidation
www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/anthem-blue-uc-health-18674151.php
By Annie Sciacca
Feb 18, 2024
Cathy Jordan, a social worker in Yuba City (Sutter County), has been a patient at UC Davis Health for two decades. Jordan was worried she would have to compete for treatment elsewhere if UC Health and her insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, did not agree to a new contract.
Cathy Jordan, a social worker in Yuba City (Sutter County), has been a patient at UC Davis Health for two decades. Jordan was worried she would have to compete for treatment elsewhere if UC Health and her insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, did not agree to a new contract.
Anne Chadwick Williams/KFF Health News
For weeks, more than half a million Anthem Blue Cross enrollees who receive health care from the University of California were held in suspense. It wasn’t clear whether they would have to find new doctors or switch plans as the health system and one of its largest insurance partners struggled to reach agreement on a new contract.
UC Health accused Anthem of not negotiating in good faith, while Anthem leaders retorted that UC Health had demanded too much and rebuffed the insurer’s request for administrative efficiencies. In fact, roughly 8 million Anthem members in California were at risk of losing in-network access to UC Health’s vast network of prestigious hospitals and medical facilities, which could have left them with much higher out-of-pocket expenses. While not all patients were made aware of the situation, Anthem notified some enrollees they would be reassigned to new primary care doctors if no deal were reached.
But even as the parties announced an eleventh-hour agreement on Feb. 5, industry analysts say the conflict has become part of a trend in which patients are increasingly caught in the crossfire of contract disputes. Amid negotiations over rising labor and equipment costs, it’s often patients who are ultimately saddled with higher bills as the health industry continues to consolidate.
“This type of contract dispute is a routine feature of the health care system,” said Kristof Stremikis, director of market analysis and insight at the California Health Care Foundation. “At the same time, from a patient’s perspective, it’s an unfortunate feature of our health care system because it creates uncertainty and anxiety.” (California Healthline is an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.)
Stremikis noted that as mergers occur in the health industry, patients are left with fewer choices. Any time there are disputes, disruptions are felt more widely. And such fights rarely result in lower costs for consumers long-term across California.
A KFF analysis found widespread evidence that consolidation of health providers leads to higher health care prices for private insurance. The same brief from 2020 found some evidence suggesting that large, consolidated insurance companies are able to obtain lower prices from providers, but that has not necessarily led to lower premiums for patients. And a 2022 report from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information found that health care costs have grown “at an unsustainable rate,” and noted that between 2010 and 2018 “health insurance premiums for job-based coverage increased more than twice the rate of growth for wages.” State regulators also found that health plans spent nearly $1.3 billion more on prescription drugs in 2022 than in 2021.
In trying to slow growth, California in 2022 set up an Office of Health Care Affordability, which has proposed a 3% spending growth target for the industry for 2025-2029. But enforcement will start in 2028 at the earliest, using spending data from 2026.
Cathy Jordan, 60, a social worker in Yuba City, California, has been a patient at UC Davis Health for two decades. Jordan was diagnosed at the end of 2021 with aggressive small cell carcinoma, a rare form of cancer. She has undergone surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and other treatments since then, yet her cancer has returned twice.
“I don’t have the luxury of time — my cancer comes back fast,” Jordan said.
She is among the group of Anthem-insured patients at UC Health who were at risk of losing access to in-network care there, and when she got a notice from Anthem, she grew alarmed, she said.
Jordan’s oncologist, Rebecca Brooks, said in an interview prior to the agreement being reached that it would be “incredibly disruptive” for cancer patients to have to switch providers in the middle of their treatments.
“It’s a detriment to their care,” said Brooks, director of the gynecologic oncology division at UC Davis Health. “It’s going to disrupt treatment and cause worse outcomes.”
Jordan said she appreciates that UC Davis Health has a National Cancer Institute comprehensive cancer center designation; the only other cancer center of that caliber in Northern California not part of UC Health is at Stanford University, several hours away in Santa Clara County.
Cathy Jordan, a social worker in Yuba City who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2021, is among the group of Anthem-insured patients at UC Health who were at risk of losing access to in-network care there.
Cathy Jordan, a social worker in Yuba City who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2021, is among the group of Anthem-insured patients at UC Health who were at risk of losing access to in-network care there.
Anne Chadwick Williams/KFF Health News
Jordan was worried that she and other UC Health patients would have to compete for treatment elsewhere. She was also uncomfortable with the idea of adjusting to a new setting and routine while undergoing intensive medical treatment.
“Someone needs to say, ‘We need to think about these patients.’ Someone needs to step up and say, ‘What’s going to be best for our patients? ’” Jordan said. “This is my life.”
Stremikis said such concerns are ever more urgent as the health care industry consolidates. UC San Francisco recently announced it would acquire two struggling hospitals in San Francisco, and it is joining Adventist Health in making a new effort to purchase a bankrupt community hospital in Madera. And UC Irvine recently agreed to buy four hospitals in Southern California.
“There is consolidation vertically up and down the supply chain and horizontally,” he explained. “So when there are disputes between these large entities, it has a larger and larger impact because there are fewer choices for patients.”
While contract disputes between health care providers and insurers are nothing new, there is some evidence that they are increasing, at least in public view. FTI Consulting published data last year that found a steady increase in media coverage of rate negotiations between providers and insurers from 2022 to 2023. In addition to the fight with Anthem, UC Health narrowly avoided a break with Aetna last year by reaching an agreement in April. And regional hospital systems, including Sonoma Valley Hospitaland Salinas Valley Health, have been at odds with Anthem within the last few months.
UC and Anthem have now agreed to extend the current contract to April 1 while terms of the new agreement are being finalized. UC Health spokesperson Heather Harper said the rate increases were below the inflation rate.
Anthem spokesperson Michael Bowman said the new contract would allow Anthem members to access care at UC Health for years to come.
“This underscores our mutual commitment to providing Anthem’s consumers and employers with access to high quality, affordable care at UC Health,” Bowman said in an email.
Annie Sciacca writes for KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow her on Twitter @anniesciacca.
Anthem and UC Health showdown highlights risks of health care consolidation
www.sfchronicle.com
The recent faceoff between Anthem Blue Cross and UC Health shows the hazards to patients posed by health care industry consolidation and reduced choice.
California State Faculty Mobilize for a No Vote
www.tempestmag.org/2024/02/california-state-faculty-mobilize-for-a-no-vote/
FEBRUARY 12, 2024
BY DANA CLOUD – GARY HOLLOWAYFacebookTwitterRedditEmail
CFA strikes January 22 in Fullerton. Photo credit: Dana Cloud.
Faculty in the California State University system, the largest public university system in the United States, went on strike on Monday, January 22 across all 23 campuses in the state. They are represented by the California Faculty Association (CFA). In November, 95 percent of union members who voted authorized a strike action in response to the system’s refusal to budge on union demands.
These demands included an across-the-board pay raise of 12 percent and raises in the salary floor for lecturers—poorly paid, contingent adjunct faculty who teach on a per-course basis with no guarantee of future classes. In addition to the wage demands, the union, which touts itself as an anti-racist, social justice union, had asked for an increase in the number of gender-inclusive restrooms and lactation/nursing spaces on all campuses; the hiring of more mental health counselors (who currently labor under a ratio of one counselor to 2500 students); an expansion of family leave from six weeks to a semester; and limits on armed policing on campuses.
Building off of a series of one-day strikes in December, the CFA planned a five-day strike for the week of January 22, the first week of school on most campuses. In spite of cold and drenching rain, thousands of faculty members came out to picket lines on the first day in festive scenes of marching, picketing, chanting, dancing, eating, and conversing. On many campuses, parking lots were nearly deserted as the strike interrupted instruction for the system’s thousands of students.
By the end of the first day of the strike, union members felt empowered by the day’s events and were ready for more.
Then, the faculty received an email Monday night announcing that the strike was over and that the union had “won.” Without consulting even the elected leadership of campus chapters, the bargaining committee signed a tentative agreement that fell far short of the union’s goals. Instead of 12 percent, the Chancellor (Dr. Mildred García) agreed to an immediate raise of five percent with another five to be contingent on the state budget. The union had been adamantly opposed to contingent raises, which had always fallen through in the past. The system agreed to modest raises in the floor salary for some lecturers, though much less than the union’s original ask.
The math is deliberately opaque, such that faculty are having a hard time figuring out whether they get the raises and by how much. Some agitators have published salary calculators that reveal that the actual gains for faculty do not come close to the estimates announced by the union after the tentative agreement was reached.
The union is claiming that the agreement is the biggest win for lecturers, but as California State University Long Beach lecturer Melissa Hidalgo explained, that is unclear:
What we’re seeing in the press is, this is a big victory for our lowest-paid faculty lecturers, which is the class that I fall into. It was also very confusing today, even when our union rep pulled out the charts and the graph. And I’m like, why can’t anything just be clear about where we belong and how much we are getting paid? None of us really knows where we’re at.
Hidalgo added that much of the increase in salary goes to less than half of all lecturers who teach five classes, amounting to a full-time load.
The agreement did not address union demands about controlling the workload of faculty who are continually asked to teach a greater number of students in each class.
The agreement completely omitted the other reforms sought by the faculty. Instead of gender-inclusive restrooms, lactation and nursing spaces, more mental health counselors, and restrictions on the police, the agreement contains what union leaders called “aspirational language” that acknowledged these needs without the commitment of any actual resources or plans for change. Family leave was expanded by four weeks, from six to ten, again, far from what prospective parents on the faculty were seeking.
Cal State Northridge computer science professor Jeff Wiegley summarizes the failures of the agreement to live up to what was agreed to in bargaining caucuses:
I can’t believe what happened. Like I was at the December 12 meeting. I was at the January 8 meeting. I saw what we agreed to as necessary and what was unacceptable, and all of that is gone. Everything that we agreed to as being necessary is no longer in the contract.
The police safety issue, for instance. We agreed that it was necessary to keep three major things. One, they can’t be armed while doing the interview. Well, none of that’s in the contract. So they can be armed to the teeth all they want. I guess they could bring in more weapons if they wanted to. Two, the police had to tell you what your rights were legally and for the union representative. That’s not actually in there anymore. So there’s no obligation for the police to change their behavior; they can withhold information or provide you with a deceptive message while they’re interviewing you, which are police tactics for getting their job done.
And then we were going to make it so that you have a union representative with you while you were being interviewed. That’s not in the contract. Even though at all of the information meetings they’re putting out, they’re saying they got you the right to a union representative, but they didn’t. What you have is the ability to request a union representative and the union specifically says that they can deny it.
So that one [is] out the window. The gender-inclusive language became just aspirational as well. I hate “should” language. I don’t like aspirational. I don’t like maybe, because it’s just not enforceable.
For many faculty, the counselor-student ratio is a big sticking point. Hidalgo explained how the lack of support for mental health affects both students and faculty:
2,500 students–one counselor for 2,500 students. So we did not get that demand. We were asking to shrink the number down. We could have brought the ratio down a lot lower, but we didn’t get that. It becomes a workload issue because not only do our students lack the professional mental health care that they need, we are the people doing the day-to-day, face-to-face work. We’re the ones in the classrooms with them. They come to our office hours with problems that we’re not equipped or trained to handle as much as I want to. I’m a lecturer. We’re here to teach.
When we have students that are telling me, I’m sorry, I just got kicked out of my house. I’m living out of my car. I say, you know, I want to help you and I want to send you to the person who can actually help.
But we don’t have enough counselors. This is why they’re entwined. That is one real kind of consequence. When we don’t have enough counselors, not only do students suffer, but so do those of us who are already overworked.
While union leadership was crowing about the alleged “victory,” large numbers of striking faculty felt shocked and betrayed. Hidalgo said,
All we know is that we should still be on strike. We’re not. It was cut way too quick. I think most of us feel a lot of the anger, which is coming from the fact that we had an incredible amount of organizing and energy behind pulling this off, and it would have been a historic first-time strike at all 23 campuses. But for it to sort of end after a day, it just feels all kinds of things, short-sighted, not strong enough. We all felt very demoralized, and it certainly was not the deal we wanted. It was really nothing new that the chancellor’s office hadn’t already offered us.
Jaimy Magdalena is a lecturer in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. She described the same feeling:
I felt so angry and betrayed and depressed because I was in the open bargaining.
And I also read the tentative agreement. That congratulatory email just was like total bullshit because the contingency language was wrong. And I had heard firsthand from union leadership that we’re not gonna ask for less than 12 percent. None of it lined up; my mind was spinning with all of these scenarios, you know, maybe if they had come out with this congratulatory email next week. But it was after day one, secretively and suddenly. For such a bad offer. It all just felt, yeah, like a betrayal.
Immediately, rank-and-file members at San Francisco State University called emergency meetings and the union executive board and president of that chapter endorsed a no vote. A concerted organizing drive for a “no” vote ensued, with SFSU, CSU Long Beach, and CSU Los Angeles as anchor campuses. The rank-and-file movement has held statewide town halls and organizing meetings supporting activist efforts on other campuses.
Image Credit: Vote No Campaign
Cal State Northridge computer science professor Jeff Wiegley summarizes the failures of the agreement to live up to what was agreed to in bargaining caucuses:
I can’t believe what happened. Like I was at the December 12 meeting. I was at the January 8 meeting. I saw what we agreed to as necessary and what was unacceptable, and all of that is gone. Everything that we agreed to as being necessary is no longer in the contract.
The police safety issue, for instance. We agreed that it was necessary to keep three major things. One, they can’t be armed while doing the interview. Well, none of that’s in the contract. So they can be armed to the teeth all they want. I guess they could bring in more weapons if they wanted to. Two, the police had to tell you what your rights were legally and for the union representative. That’s not actually in there anymore. So there’s no obligation for the police to change their behavior; they can withhold information or provide you with a deceptive message while they’re interviewing you, which are police tactics for getting their job done.
And then we were going to make it so that you have a union representative with you while you were being interviewed. That’s not in the contract. Even though at all of the information meetings they’re putting out, they’re saying they got you the right to a union representative, but they didn’t. What you have is the ability to request a union representative and the union specifically says that they can deny it.
So that one [is] out the window. The gender-inclusive language became just aspirational as well. I hate “should” language. I don’t like aspirational. I don’t like maybe, because it’s just not enforceable.
For many faculty, the counselor-student ratio is a big sticking point. Hidalgo explained how the lack of support for mental health affects both students and faculty:
2,500 students–one counselor for 2,500 students. So we did not get that demand. We were asking to shrink the number down. We could have brought the ratio down a lot lower, but we didn’t get that. It becomes a workload issue because not only do our students lack the professional mental health care that they need, we are the people doing the day-to-day, face-to-face work. We’re the ones in the classrooms with them. They come to our office hours with problems that we’re not equipped or trained to handle as much as I want to. I’m a lecturer. We’re here to teach.
When we have students that are telling me, I’m sorry, I just got kicked out of my house. I’m living out of my car. I say, you know, I want to help you and I want to send you to the person who can actually help.
But we don’t have enough counselors. This is why they’re entwined. That is one real kind of consequence. When we don’t have enough counselors, not only do students suffer, but so do those of us who are already overworked.
While union leadership was crowing about the alleged “victory,” large numbers of striking faculty felt shocked and betrayed. Hidalgo said,
All we know is that we should still be on strike. We’re not. It was cut way too quick. I think most of us feel a lot of the anger, which is coming from the fact that we had an incredible amount of organizing and energy behind pulling this off, and it would have been a historic first-time strike at all 23 campuses. But for it to sort of end after a day, it just feels all kinds of things, short-sighted, not strong enough. We all felt very demoralized, and it certainly was not the deal we wanted. It was really nothing new that the chancellor’s office hadn’t already offered us.
Jaimy Magdalena is a lecturer in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. She described the same feeling:
I felt so angry and betrayed and depressed because I was in the open bargaining.
And I also read the tentative agreement. That congratulatory email just was like total bullshit because the contingency language was wrong. And I had heard firsthand from union leadership that we’re not gonna ask for less than 12 percent. None of it lined up; my mind was spinning with all of these scenarios, you know, maybe if they had come out with this congratulatory email next week. But it was after day one, secretively and suddenly. For such a bad offer. It all just felt, yeah, like a betrayal.
Immediately, rank-and-file members at San Francisco State University called emergency meetings and the union executive board and president of that chapter endorsed a no vote. A concerted organizing drive for a “no” vote ensued, with SFSU, CSU Long Beach, and CSU Los Angeles as anchor campuses. The rank-and-file movement has held statewide town halls and organizing meetings supporting activist efforts on other campuses.
Protest at San Francisco State University. Image credit: Vote No Campaign.
Through concerted committee work, the group has produced social media content and other publicity, drafted emails to faculty, and collectively generated talking points. In addition to advocating that the agreement be voted down, the movement is building to work toward greater union democracy, whichever way the vote goes.
In the CFA, chapter executive boards are elected, with representatives for tenure-track faculty and lecturers from multiple departments. However, this is the only election that union members participate in. The bargaining team is appointed by the union president. The union’s general assembly is delegated from the executive boards.
In a democratic gesture, the union had embraced “open bargaining,” in which members could attend, in person or via Zoom, bargaining sessions with management. But there was no open bargaining on January 22.
CFA’s rationale for the sudden and disappointing agreement was that they were not confident that faculty were up for a longer strike, that Monday represented “peak power,” and that what the Chancellor brought to the bargaining table that evening was absolutely the best that could be won.
Anyone involved in the labor movement knows, however, that the first day of a strike does not represent “peak power.” As Wiegley put it,
This idea that the longer you’re on strike, the weaker you are is just absurd. I guarantee you that the deal that the Writers’ Guild got after three or four months of striking was stronger than whatever the hell was offered on the first day. This is kind of like a weird game of poker. If you have a hand and you want the other side to fold quickly, you don’t gradually escalate your bets. You don’t put in little dollars here, little dollars there. You just bet a massive amount and then the person just has to fold unless they’ve totally got you beat, and I don’t think we were totally beat. So we have played this game entirely wrong.
In the context of massively successful academic strikes over the past 18 months, a longer strike—and, as some faculty argued for, an indefinite one—could have generated increasing pressure on the system to give more. The fact that the system’s team came to the table immediately after Monday’s strike is an indication that they were feeling the pressure. Turning up the heat would have been the logical next step.
The strike had massive major media support and the endorsement of a growing number of politicians (including Bernie Sanders) at both state and national levels. Members of the Board of Trustees were indicating that they would break with the Chancellor. And thousands of faculty were out on the picket lines. Many members believe, in Hidalgo’s words, “we could have gotten more if we had kept striking.”
Wiegley thinks that this abortive strike sends a damaging message in the long term:
Here’s what we did this time. They came to us and they said, take it or leave it. So we had to take it? I’m like, no, you just screwed yourself. Now we will never be able to fight for a good contract until we have an open-ended long strike that lasts months because they know they can always just tell us, take it or leave it, and we will take it. That’s the position it put us in. We were ready to demonstrate our power as a striking union. And they took that away from us.
Since the agreement, union leaders have been pressing hard for a yes vote in local and statewide town halls. While they have access to lists of all union faculty, the no-vote campaign has no such resources, and information is spreading by word of mouth. The union is using email lists to campaign hard for the agreement while no-vote organizers rely on personal conversations and word-of-mouth.
No-vote organizers are urging members to actually read the agreement before voting. Wiegley said,
I think the biggest message that I would like to see put out to readers and to all of the members is: Really read the tentative agreement, look for the loopholes and all of the conditionality that exists there. Be informed about what you’re voting for, about how it affects you and the other people that were supposed to be represented here.
And, he added, “Be careful about what the union is telling you. That’s a propaganda machine.”
The CFA is using mass emails and texts to whip up a vote in favor of the agreement. But there is considerable energy behind the vote-no effort and whole campuses are likely to come out against the agreement. The entire executive board, including the chapter president, at San Francisco State, committed to a no-vote and appealed to CFA leadership for a fair hearing:
We the undersigned union organizers of CFA-SFSU write to express our commitment to an egalitarian union democracy and an equal commitment to the Anti-Racist and Social Justice goals of our union. We request that the statewide resources of our union, paid by members’ union dues, be restricted to impartial communications and processes related to the ratification vote on the Tentative Agreement (TA). We see this as an essential step in restoring trust pursuant to the abrupt demobilization of the strike without consultation with the members. We have been sincerely delighted by the embrace of open bargaining as a step toward the broader open-bargaining principles followed by democratic, fighting unions that win big for their members. The abandonment of these principles at the height of our power has demoralized rank-and-file members and broken trust. A scrupulous commitment to neutral communications and equal time for proponents of YES and NO perspectives is essential to restore trust, ensure that members will accept election results regardless of the outcome, and foster reconciliation and unity.
At Long Beach, San Jose State University, and elsewhere, the rank-and-file effort is mobilizing faculty through parallel town hall meetings. Hidalgo commented,
There are two groups of people organizing two sets of town halls, and I’ve been on all of them. You know what? We’re viscerally upset and angry that we’re not striking still, that we didn’t get anything close to what we had asked for, what our demands were. We had so many students out there with us.
Activists see this process and developing infrastructure for longer-term efforts to bring the rank-and-file into leadership in the union. Long Beach professor May Lin was active in the CFA Contract Action Team in the run-up to the strike. With Hidalgo, Lin is part of a collective of Cal State Long Beach rank-and-file CFA members. Lin said,
There’s this statewide leadership that makes decisions, and the process itself is undemocratic. And we have all these people who feel alienated from it, who were understandably enraged. On campus, faculty had already been building networks and connections around leftist organizing, especially with faculty of color. After what went down [on] Monday, we were able to build on those communities.
Regardless of the outcome of the vote on the agreement, there is significant momentum for a campaign to reform the union to make it more democratic and representative of the faculty’s interests. Wiegley explained,
The tentative agreement is bad. That’s a problem in itself. But then you recognize that there’s an underlying fundamental problem that needs to change, which is the structure of the union. The bargaining team and the strategy team should be elected. By us. Many of us are recognizing that. You know, this is not a very democratic union in the sense of rank-and-file democracy. And then you start getting more people into this group, not just the vote no group, but a bigger group with a higher critical mass of people saying, things have to change.
Activists understand that the movement for union democracy is the only check against the neoliberal takeover of our universities. One outcome of austerity budgets is the growth in the ranks of part-time contingent lecturers, who now teach more than seventy percent of Cal State students. As Hidalgo put it,
The real enemy is the neoliberal upside-down world where the presidents and everybody at the top are making obscene amounts of money and none of it trickles down. The real criminal is Ronald Reagan (governor from 1967-75) for charging tuition in the first place when the master plan of California says public colleges should be tuition-free for students. So structural capitalism is a big problem, obviously, because we wouldn’t be in this neoliberal mess. The real problem is the neoliberal structure of a public education system where we’re always fighting for crumbs at the bottom and where it’s possible to have such a stratified workforce where you can have people literally with the same degrees and the same credentials, the same CVs, getting paid so much less. We’re the Uber drivers of higher ed.
The no-vote activists have a sense of what’s ahead and the role a significant no-vote could have on the union. Magdalena said,
What I want to see is the vote no to pass. And then all of the things to democratize the union. I absolutely believe in the people that I’m working with on these various campaigns. So whatever that means—changing the board of directors, getting more people on the voting body. And to get a different bargaining team for sure and to get a different structure in place. It’s not about getting a different president or a different leader.
“But,” she concluded, “This could be a catalyst.”
California State faculty mobilize for a no vote
www.tempestmag.org
Dana Cloud and Gary Holloway interviewed four activists in the California Faculty Association who are urging a “no” vote on a bad TA.
A bankrupt California hospital left a health care desert. Two medical groups move to reopen it A
calmatters.org/health/2024/02/madera-community-hospital-ucsf/
BY ANA B. IBARRA FEBRUARY 8, 2024UPDATED FEBRUARY 9, 2024
A bankrupt San Joaquin Valley hospital whose closure led the state to create a bailout fund for distressed providers could reopen under the banner of two major California health systems.
UCSF Health and Adventist Health today announced that they plan to team up and submit a plan to revive Madera Community Hospital, which shut down just over a year ago.
Officials from UCSF and Adventist did not disclose a price tag and said they were keeping details quiet given the nature of the bidding process in bankruptcy court. The court has to review and approve the proposal.
“We’re committed to not only reopening the facility but ensuring that these facilities are both clinically credible and financially sustainable into the future,” Suresh Gunasekaran, president of UCSF Health, said during the press call.
San Joaquin Valley lawmakers joined them at a press briefing, where they embraced the partnership. They called it “unique” and a “dream come true” for a region that has fewer doctors per capita than wealthier parts of the state.
They said the proposal would restore critical health services that were stripped away from Madera residents and bring the resources of the University of California Health system to an underserved community.
“The partnership will bring prestige and stability that can help to rebuild community trust and restore faith in the quality of care that customers can expect to receive,” said Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat whose district includes Madera.
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The news comes just days after UCSF Health announced that it had agreed to purchase two other struggling hospitals in San Francisco from Dignity Health: St. Mary’s Medical Center and St. Francis Memorial Hospital.
UCSF already leads the largest medical education program in the San Joaquin Valley via its regional campus in Fresno where it trains more than 300 medical students a year.
Several medical groups and management companies have courted Madera Community Hospital with potential partnerships, but none has materialized.
Most recently, the hospital was exploring a partnership with Modesto-based health management company American Advanced Management Inc. The company in a written statement late Thursday said it has worked for months on its plan to reopen the hospital and that it expects to gain approval from the bankruptcy court next week.
Get the facts before you vote in this year’s primary election.
“Any change in direction at this point opens the door to many more months of delays, further
jeopardizing lives and health in the Madera community, as studies have shown.
This hospital and this community cannot afford any further delays and uncertainty in returning vital health care services to Madera,” The company said. “The path forward with American Advanced Management is not theoretical, to be determined, speculative, or uncertain. We will open this facility, grow services, and meet the community’s needs.”
Adventist Health had previously expressed interest in taking over operations, but ultimately pulled out citing that it was unable to find a “fiscally viable solution.”
“Adventist Health looked at the circumstances surrounding Madera and realized we just couldn’t do it on our own,” said Kerry Heinrich, President and CEO at Adventist Health. “We want this to be a quality institution and serve all people of Madera and the surrounding communities.”
The bankruptcy and closure of Madera Community Hospital left a county of 160,000 people without critical hospital services, forcing residents to travel at least 30 to 40 minutes to hospitals in Fresno or Merced.
This spurred lawmakers to allocate $300 million in loans for it and other troubled hospitals. The state began doling out the money last fall, earmarking up to $57 million for Madera alone. That money is currently still in possession of the state, and will not become available to Madera Community until a purchase deal or partnership is hashed out.
This story was updated to include a statement American Advanced Management Inc.
Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
California Health Care Foundation – Health Care That Works for All Californians
www.chcf.org
The California Health Care Foundation is dedicated to advancing meaningful, measurable improvements in the way the health care delivery system provides care to the people of California, particularly t…
UCSF to pay $100 million to acquire two struggling S.F. hospitals
www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-ucsf-100-million-acquisition-18642896.php
UCSF Health has confirmed that its $100 million deal to acquire two struggling San Francisco community hospitals is just weeks away from closing.
The city’s preeminent medical research institution has signed an agreement to purchase St. Mary’s Medical Center at 450 Stanyan St. — San Francisco’s oldest Catholic hospital — and St. Francis Memorial Hospital at 900 Hyde St. from Dignity Health by the end of March.
The possibility of the deal first emerged in July, and some concerns from St. Mary’s doctors surfaced immediately over whether UCSF Health would eliminate important programs.
The acquisition would mark a notable change in San Francisco’s health care landscape, though the scale of the transaction is smaller than that of the large mergers that have led to the Bay Area’s health care sector being dominated by a few larger providers.
UCSF Health officials say the intent is to bring diversified care choices to consumers by investing in two underused hospitals that will augment UCSF Health’s academic medical system with community-based services.
The 167-year-old St. Mary’s joined several other hospitals in 1986 to form the medical network Catholic Healthcare West, a precursor to Dignity Health. The network acquired St. Francis in 1993, and in 2012 renamed itself Dignity Health.
A pedestrian passes St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco. The acquisition of St. Mary’s by UCSF means the hospital will no longer be limited by religious exemptions to health care.
A pedestrian passes St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco. The acquisition of St. Mary’s by UCSF means the hospital will no longer be limited by religious exemptions to health care.
The deal, once closed, would bring the facilities and their thousands of workers under the UCSF banner, adding two emergency rooms and 500 beds to UCSF’s existing single emergency room and 1,200 beds. It would also expand UCSF’s sprawling real estate footprint in the city by nearly 1 million square feet.
UCSF officials told the Chronicle last week that existing programs and services at the former Dignity facilities will be preserved. And, yet, the pending acquisition will usher in at least one sweeping change at the two community hospitals: As part of UCSF Health, they would no longer operate under the religious and ethical directives of the Catholic Church, which prohibit abortion and contraception.
“There will no longer be any affiliation with the Catholic health systems or church — that’s critical and part of UCSF’s values, and something that is important to us and understood by the team that will be joining us,” said UCSF Health Affiliates Network President Shelby Decosta, who will oversee the hospitals’ transition.
In 2019, UCSF called off its pursuit of an affiliation with Dignity Health in the Bay Area over concerns, at the time, that deepening ties with the Catholic system would compromise health care options for women and LGBTQ patients.
But the hospitals’ worsening financial realities have created an opportunity for UCSF that was too good to pass up, said UCSF Health President and CEO Suresh Gunasekaran. St. Mary’s and St. Francis have a combined occupancy rate of 25%, he said, and each lose millions of dollars every year.
St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco will be acquired by UCSF, which is purchasing it and St. Mary’s Medical Center for $100 million.
St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco will be acquired by UCSF, which is purchasing it and St. Mary’s Medical Center for $100 million.
Benjamin Fanjoy/The Chronicle
Meanwhile, UCSF faces a growing need to address overcrowding at its facilities, where patients face increasingly long wait times for emergency care and other services.
“Our hospital beds are completely full almost every evening. This is causing delays both in our operating rooms and for patients in the emergency room,” Gunasekaran said. “We thought that the best way to address this significant healthcare demand is to create another platform for health care in the city of San Francisco that allows us to meet patients’ health care needs at an earlier time, before it gets serious.”
By making investments in areas such as the equipment, infrastructure — for instance, electronic medical records — and the facilities at St. Mary’s and St. Francis hospitals, Gunasekaran said that the idea is to “expand the scope of what those hospitals are able to deliver in 2024” and attract physicians to the hospitals.
Their services will run “complementary” to UCSF’s offerings, which are focused on “complex care” that is aligned with its research-based mission, he said.
“What we recognized is that St. Mary’s and St. Francis are run very differently, and we want them to remain different,” Gunasekaran said. “They are much more community-based and much more focused on the common conditions that many patients have, and we want to preserve that legacy.
“We really think that this will open up new options in the city.”
For current patients at St. Mary’s and St. Francis, costs such as co-pays would not change, as the same contracts that the hospitals currently have with health insurers would remain in place subject to their approval, according to Gunasekaran.
An emergency vehicle is parked outside St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.
An emergency vehicle is parked outside St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.
Health industry watchers say they’ll monitor the impact on patients’ prices. UCSF is one of the region’s largest health care providers after Kaiser and Sutter, and consolidation within the industry has contributed to higher prices for consumers, research shows. One 2018 analysis found that Northern California residents pay 20% to 30% more for health services than those in Southern California, where the industry is less consolidated, even after accounting for the Bay Area’s higher cost of living.
“While we don’t know the impact this particular acquisition is going to have, we have decades of research and experience here in California with various types of consolidation,” said Kristof Stremikis of the California Health Care Foundation, which researches health care markets. “From a patient perspective, consolidation leads to higher prices with no improvements in quality.”
UCSF leaders say they have a written agreement in the deal to keep all 1,800 employees from the two hospitals. UCSF Health is also maintaining the open medical staff models at both hospitals, meaning the 700 independent physicians could continue to practice there. UCSF currently has 14,000 employees.
Both medical centers will remain open during the transition and continue to offer the same services and programs after the acquisition is completed.
That includes the Sister Mary Philippa clinic and Women’s Health center at St. Mary’s and the Bothin Burn Center at St. Francis.
Dr. Richard Podolin, chairman of the community board at St. Mary’s, said he is “very enthusiastic” about the acquisition.
“At St. Mary’s and St. Francis, there is a real commitment of the physicians for providing excellent care to the community, particularly the most vulnerable members,” said Podolin, the hospital’s former chief of staff and a cardiologist. “This is a really great opportunity to expand our services, to ensure our future, to grow together. Now, instead of closing wards, which we had been doing, we’re talking about expanding and opening up 100 new beds in our hospital to handle the overflow from UCSF.”
How many of the two hospitals’ employees and medical staff will stay on once UCSF is at the helm is unclear.
“There’s no guarantee, but we will do everything we can to encourage them to stay and be part of the future hospitals,” said Decosta, the UCSF Health Affiliates Network leader.
There is some precedent for UCSF acquiring a religious hospital: In 1990, it bought Mount Zion, San Francisco’s first Jewish hospital.
“Mount Zion also had a very rich history of serving patients in the community, and we preserved that rich history and tradition in a respectful way that honored the work that came before, but very much still integrated it completely into UCSF in terms of our systems and processes,” Gunasekaran said. “Each system is different — St. Mary’s and St. Francis are already part of a very large health care system in CommonSpirit Health, and that was not the case with Mount Zion.”
In early 2019, Dignity Health merged with Catholic Health Initiatives, creating a new, $29 billion nonprofit health system that today is known as CommonSpirit Health. Based in Chicago, CommonSpirit reported steep operating losses in fiscal years 2022and 2023, and reported a $441 million operating loss in the first quarter of the 2024 fiscal year on increased expenses.
The CHI-Dignity Health merger required approval by California’s attorney general and from the Vatican — Decosta said that the Catholic Church will also need to sign off on the sale of St. Mary’s and St. Francis hospitals, but added that this part of the transaction is managed by Dignity Health.
For UCSF, the deal is an opportunity to expand not only its offerings, but also its already significant footprint in San Francisco, where it is among the largest landowners.
UCSF owns more than 8.9 million square feet of space in the city — across hundreds of buildings that make up its Parnassus Heights, Mount Zion and Mission Bay campuses, as well as in off-campus buildings — of which about 30% is dedicated to UCSF Health. In San Francisco, UCSF is also affiliated with Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the Gladstone Institutes, and it also owns the 61-acre Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve.
According to figures provided by UCSF, St. Mary’s campus on the edge of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park spans roughly 403,000 square feet, while the St. Francis campus in Nob Hill stretches about 471,000 square feet. The properties are assessed at $121 million to $192 million.
Gunasekaran described the negotiated price for the two campuses as “fair market value” when taking into account their continued health care uses. He said the pricing was validated by an independent third-party assessment.
“You have to factor in the use. The hospitals still need significant investment and seismic compliance as well as to break even,” he said. “That’s where we arrived at this price, which is reflective of that value.”
Per a preliminary estimate, UCSF Health plans an immediate investment of $75 million to $100 million to address “deferred maintenance projects and needed facilities and equipment improvements” once the deal closes.
Exclusive: UCSF to pay $100 million to acquire two struggling S.F. hospitals
www.sfchronicle.com
UCSF will pay $100 million to acquire two struggling San Francisco hospitals — St. Mary’s Medical Center and St. Francis Memorial Hospital.