UC Reaches Deal With UPTE, Averting Historic Walkout With Raises, $25 Wage Floor

On the morning of Nov. 17, 2025, tens of thousands of University of California employees were supposed to be on strike, from radiology technologists and lab scientists to custodians and shuttle drivers. Pickets were planned outside the system’s five academic medical centers and 10 campuses in what unions billed as the largest walkout in UC history.

Instead, most of those workers reported to their shifts.

Nine days earlier, the University of California and University Professional and Technical Employees–Communications Workers of America Local 9119 (UPTE) announced a four-year tentative agreement that ended 17 months of bitter bargaining and canceled a planned systemwide walkout by roughly 21,000 technical and health care employees.

The contract, ratified Nov. 21 with 98% approval from nearly 12,000 voting members, delivers compounded raises that exceed 27% for most workers, establishes a $25-an-hour minimum wage across UPTE job titles, expands parental leave and places new limits on how fast health insurance premiums can rise. It also averted a three-union strike that had been expected to involve about 65,000 UC employees represented by UPTE, AFSCME Local 3299 and the California Nurses Association.

For UC—one of the nation’s largest public university systems—the agreement is both a costly commitment and a temporary reprieve in a period of rolling labor unrest and budget pressure. For the union, it is evidence that a workforce often invisible to students and patients—clinical technologists, research staff and IT specialists—can use coordinated strike threats to win concessions that reshape working conditions.

Seventeen months of bargaining and seven strike days

UC and UPTE began negotiations in June 2024 after the union’s previous contract expired. The union represents health care, research and technical professionals at UC’s campuses, medical centers and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including clinical lab scientists, imaging technologists, pharmacists, behavioral health clinicians and a range of technical and IT staff.

Talks dragged through 2024 and into 2025 with little progress. UC publicized a series of proposals that it described as “historic wage increases” and said would keep the university competitive while acknowledging “significant financial uncertainty” and state budget constraints. UPTE leaders countered that the offers did not keep up with housing costs in regions like the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and did little to address staffing shortages they said were undermining patient care and research.

By early 2025, the dispute had spilled into the streets. UPTE and AFSCME Local 3299 organized a three-day strike at all 10 UC campuses and five medical centers in late February. In April, UPTE led a one-day walkout over stalled talks, with AFSCME joining in solidarity at some locations. The union later told members it had spent seven days on strike during the contract fight.

On Sept. 10, UC declared it had made a “last, best and final offer” that included multi-year raises, step increases and a path to a $25 minimum wage for many positions. UPTE rejected the package and began preparing a two-day systemwide strike for Nov. 17–18. AFSCME and the California Nurses Association announced they would join in support, raising the prospect of widespread disruptions to surgeries, imaging, laboratory testing, food service and custodial work across the system.

UC officials condemned the planned walkout as unnecessary. In a November labor negotiations update, the Office of the President said work stoppages would “needlessly disrupt care for patients and services for students” and argued the university had put forward “fair, competitive offers.”

A late turn in mediation

Behind the scenes, negotiations resumed with the help of a mediator. On Nov. 8, UC and UPTE issued a joint statement saying they had reached an agreement “following UPTE’s request to resume mediation” and that the deal came after 17 months of bargaining and three weeks of mediated talks.

UPTE quickly moved to cancel its strike. In a message to members, the union called the tentative agreement a “major victory” that was only possible because workers had struck earlier in the year and were prepared to do so again.

Dan Russell, an information technology professional at UC Berkeley who serves as UPTE’s president and chief negotiator, said in union communications that the contract showed “what’s possible when 21,000 professionals stand together” and described UPTE members as the “strong foundation” of UC’s hospitals and research labs.

Raises, a $25 wage floor and equity increases

Under the agreement, most UC-system UPTE members will see a combination of step increases and across-the-board raises over each year of the four-year contract.

In 2025, eligible employees receive a minimum 2% step increase in January. In July, they get a 5% general wage increase or enough of a boost to reach at least $25 an hour, whichever is higher. On top of that, every job title receives at least a 1% “equity” increase, aimed at addressing pay disparities within classifications. The equity raises are retroactive to the first full pay period after ratification.

In 2026, wages rise again through a 2% step increase in January and a 5% across-the-board raise in July, for a combined 7%. In 2027 and 2028, workers receive a 2% step and a 4% general increase each year, for 6% in each of the final two years.

UC separately agreed to a slightly different structure for UPTE members at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where employees will receive across-the-board increases of 7% in 2025 and 2026 and 6% in 2027 and 2028.

Taken together, the annual increases, step moves and equity adjustments mean most UPTE-represented employees will see pay grow by substantially more than 27% in nominal terms over the life of the contract. A 27% figure previously circulated online as the value of the UPTE deal appears to match the wage package UC touted for nurses in its tentative agreement with the California Nurses Association, not the terms of the UPTE settlement.

The contract also creates a $25-per-hour minimum wage across all UPTE job titles at UC. That floor is significant for lower-paid classifications in high-cost markets and adds to a broader trend of public-sector workers pushing for wage floors closer to local living-wage benchmarks.

Health care premiums, leave and job protections

Beyond pay, UPTE members secured new protections against rising health care costs. UC agreed to subsidize employee premiums so that most Blue & Gold HMO and some Kaiser HMO plans will have 2026 rates similar to 2024 levels. The contract sets caps on how much employees’ premiums can increase in 2027 and 2028, giving workers more certainty that raises will not be swallowed by health insurance.

The agreement adds time off and expands leave for families. UPTE-represented birth parents can now take up to 12 months of unpaid parental leave, a benefit that previously existed primarily for some nursing and other classifications. Members also receive an additional floating holiday and a union-specific “UPTE floating holiday,” to be implemented within 120 days of ratification. Exempt employees who work at least an eight-hour shift on a holiday become entitled to full holiday pay for that day.

The contract includes several measures aimed at work-life balance and job security. UC must give at least 30 days’ notice before changing a worker’s remote or hybrid schedule. For vacation, if a request is denied, employees are to be offered a preapproved window of up to 10 consecutive days off.

On career advancement, the university agreed to set clear timelines and standards for reclassification and promotion. Management must respond to reclassification requests within 90 days, and an appeals panel made up of compensation staff outside the worker’s department will have authority to issue binding decisions. The contract requires UC to explore alternatives to layoffs before eliminating positions and strengthens preferential rehire and recall rights, including a three-year recall period for certain health care titles.

UPTE also won expanded access for union stewards and guaranteed time during new employee orientations, measures that can help the union organize and enforce the contract in a sprawling system with roughly 265,000 faculty and staff.

Other unions and unresolved tensions

Although UPTE’s agreement pulled one major group of workers back from the brink, it did not fully avert campus disruptions.

After UPTE canceled its November strike, AFSCME Local 3299, which represents about 40,000 service and patient care technical workers, moved forward with its own walkout. The California Nurses Association later reached a separate four-year tentative agreement with UC on Nov. 16 and called off its participation in the two-day action. UC said the nurses’ deal included 27% in wage increases and new language on staffing and the use of artificial intelligence in care delivery.

The sequence underscored the complexity of labor relations at UC, where multiple unions representing tens of thousands of employees are frequently at different points in their bargaining cycles. Teamsters Local 2010, which represents clerical and allied service workers, and unions representing resident physicians and academic employees have also been in negotiations with the university over the past year.

UC officials have repeatedly cited state funding cuts, hiring freezes and uncertainty about future budgets in warning that meeting unions’ demands could force trade-offs in programs and services. Unions, in turn, have pointed to new capital projects and rising executive compensation as evidence that frontline pay has not been a priority.

A test case for public institutions

The UPTE agreement offers a preview of how those competing pressures may play out across California’s public sector.

The $25-an-hour wage floor, premium caps and expanded parental leave set a high bar for technical and professional employees in public higher education. The deal is likely to serve as a reference point in ongoing talks at UC and could influence negotiations at other public universities, state agencies and county health systems competing for similar workers.

At the same time, the contract’s implementation will test UC’s administrative and financial capacity. The university has committed to rolling out equity raises, lump-sum payments and new holidays within tight timelines, and departments may face pressure to adjust hiring or staffing plans to absorb higher labor costs.

On the November Monday when UPTE members had once expected to be on picket lines, UC’s hospitals and labs largely functioned as usual. But the concessions that kept them running reflect a shift in leverage for the workers who staff them—and foreshadow new debates over how the cost of California’s public universities will be shared among taxpayers, students and employees in the years ahead.