LOS ANGELES, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 40,000 healthcare workers at University of California (UC), a top public university system in the United States, kicked off a two-day strike on Wednesday morning.

"Frontline Service and Patient Care UC workers are on strike Nov. 20 and Nov. 21, 2024, to protest UC's bad-faith bargaining and unfair labor practices," said the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299, a union representing over 35,000 service workers, patient care technical workers, skilled craft workers, and more at UC's 10 campuses, 5 medical centers, numerous clinics, research laboratories, and UC Hastings College of Law.

"UC's illegal conduct -- from showing up to negotiations without any authority to forge compromises to announcing that it will bypass bargaining altogether to impose higher healthcare costs on workers -- has left workers who take care of students and patients every day with no choice but to go on strike," said the labor union in a statement.

"Our members are the people who, frankly, you don't see because the campuses are clean, the food's cooked, students are taken care of," said the union's executive director Liz Perlman in a Facebook post, adding that "We do need to be taken care of, too."

About 4,000 members of another labor union at the university system, the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE)-CWA Local 9119, also joined the strike.

UC officials said in a post on X that they hope labor unions "will work with us to reach a fair deal for these valued employees soon" and "will ensure operational continuity of essential functions, which includes patient care, continue at a level of excellence that UC patients, students, faculty and staff expect."

UC officials said in a statement earlier this month that they "fundamentally disagree with AFSCME's claims of bad faith bargaining and characterization of unacceptable bargaining proposals."

"From January to May, University of California and AFSCME bargaining teams met 22 times and worked collaboratively on proposals for the UC AFSCME-represented employees," said UC officials, adding that the University's proposals include 700 million U.S. dollars in economic increases for the labor union's members and a direct response to what the labor union had asked for the greater of a 25-dollar-an-hour minimum wage or a 5-percent across-the-board raise. Enditem

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