More than 57,000 University of California employees represented by two labor unions went on strike at research labs and medical facilities across the 10-campus system beginning Wednesday.

The University Professional and Technical Employees — CWA Local 9119 is blaming staffing shortages and eroding patient care at UC campuses, hospitals, laboratories and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“We started this process over two years ago,” said Dan Russell, UPTE president. “Our members are pretty insulted that UC has just refused to even have this conversation.”

Local 9119, which is on strike through Friday, was joined by AFSCME Local 3299, a 37,000-member union of service and patient care workers, who are striking through today.

Todd Stenhouse, a spokesman with AFSCME, said his union is protesting “affordability” issues and concerns that UC negotiators are not bargaining in good faith.

“The staff vacancy rate has tripled since before the pandemic, and real wages and a growing housing affordability crisis plagues the university’s frontline workforce, leaving many to endure long commutes,” he said Wednesday.

The union’s members include groundskeepers, custodians, MRI technologists and respiratory therapists.

“There is a five-alarm fire in staffing within the UC system,” he said.

In Southern California, the unions went out on strike at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, UC Riverside and UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange.

Some non-life-threatening surgeries could be affected at those facilities, Russell said.

“We’re working with the university to make sure that there are staff on site if any emergencies happen, and nobody has any permanent repercussions,” Russell said. Outpatient surgeries may be rescheduled.

The UPTE workers include physician assistants, optometrists, pharmacists, RN case managers, rehabilitation specialists, mental health clinicians, clinical lab scientists, staff research associates and IT analysts.

“The university (system)will do everything possible to ensure strike impacts on patients, students, faculty and staff are mitigated,” UC spokeswoman Heather Hansen said in a statement.

Hansen, who said that the unions — which are bargaining separately — have walked away from the negotiation table in the most recent bargaining sessions and declared an impasse. She denied that a staffing crisis exists within the UC system.

The university is “disappointed” that the unions took the route of striking instead of responding to its wage and benefit proposals since May 2024.

She wrote in an email that the university proposed a 5% across-the-board pay increase beginning July 1 and a 3% wage increase in the second and third years of the contract. The university also offered to raise all lower-paid employees to a wage of at least $25 an hour by July 1.

Russell said that negotiations began in earnest in June but collapsed in the fall when university negotiators walked away from the bargaining table.

Nearly all, or 98%, of union members voted in favor of the strike authorization on Feb. 14, he said.