Frequently Asked Questions

  • We need a stronger collective voice to advocate for our patients, our colleagues, and our profession. Each year, we absorb increased pressures, new demands, and make herculean efforts to care for our patients. Our individual advocacy is not enough. Time has come for UC physicians to have a collective voice.

  • Healthcare professionals at UC including Pharmacists, Physician Assistants, Dentists, Optometrists, Psychologists, and more currently receive improved benefits and protections that physicians do not. These disparities fuel retention challenges, impacting patient access and quality of care. Improved benefits under the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract include:

    1. Full retirement at age 60 (instead of 65), with no PEPRA cap (currently $159,733 annually) on retirement benefits

    2. Guaranteed annual raises/cost-of-living adjustments (8% in 2025, 7% in 2026, and 6% in 2027 and 2028)

    3. Reduced healthcare premiums and caps on premium increases

    4. Improved protected parental leave of up to a year

  • It is important for physicians to form our own union led by a representative body covering every major medical specialty and each UC Health campus. This effort emerged from many conversations with healthcare professional colleagues in UPTE last year during the height of their successful campaign to win a powerful new contract. Forming our committee with UPTE’s backing presents several advantages for physicians:

    1. Extending the improved pay and benefits of the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract to physicians is the fastest route to immediately address the pressures on our physician colleagues and improve recruitment and retention. Adopting the superior pension, healthcare, leaves, and job security protections of the UPTE contract as a baseline would allow physicians to focus our bargaining efforts on the issues most important to us: resource constraints, support staffing, and a voice in health system policy and decision-making that shape our ability to give quality care.

    2. The strongest drive for forming our physicians union comes from our desire for a collective voice in issues impacting patient care and research. UPTE’s healthcare professionals are effective at moving the UC regents. Our joint efforts to improve patient care strengthen our campaign for a physicians union.

    3. Starting from zero with a union that does not have a career-staff contract at UC Health would likely lead to years of bargaining before physicians see any benefits from a union agreement.

  • Yes. Under California’s state law, the Higher Education and Employment Relations Act (HEERA), the UC is prohibited from barring or interfering with your right to speak with your colleagues about unionization. You may discuss the union in any context that colleagues might otherwise talk about sports, the weather, or a family vacation. If a member of management or leadership makes you feel like your outreach is inappropriate, please contact us here to let us know.

  • Step 1: Physicians form our committee of physician point people in each division and specialty, engage our colleagues to identify their top priorities, and gather support via our union support card and priorities survey.

    Step 2: Once a near-majority of doctors across specialties complete our survey, we will hold a union election for all physicians to vote to form a union.

    Step 3: California’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) certifies majority support for unionization. Physicians and clinical faculty receive the improved benefits of the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract.

    Step 4: Physicians/clinical faculty vote to elect a bargaining team to negotiate over physician-specific issues.

  • While you may be contacted by another union, we ask that you refrain from signing a card with an outside organization so that our unionization effort can remain united. The American College of Physicians (ACP) recommends that physicians organize together with existing unions of healthcare professionals dedicated to patient care in their health systems. Unionization with an outside union would mean years of re-litigating the improved pension, leaves, and benefits standards healthcare professionals like Pharmacists and PAs in UPTE have already set. If you have already signed a card with another union, you may revoke that card.

  • If you have not done so already, fill out your priorities survey and support card today at uc-physicians.org/survey. Once you have done that, reach out to our UC Physicians Committee organizing team here to set up a department meeting in your area, help with survey outreach, or answer other questions.

  • Our unionization effort includes all physicians and clinical faculty across the state, including senate-covered faculty. Physicians in ClinX titles will need to form a new bargaining unit but will benefit from benchmarking their demands to the standards already set by the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract.

  • Yes. Physicians are permitted to unionize under the relevant California state law, the Higher Education Employment Relations Act (HEERA). The law also prohibits the UC from interfering with physician organizing, sending out anti-union communications, or retaliating against employees for union activity.

  • No. A physician strike will not be called without a majority vote by all UC doctors. By organizing a high-participation campaign where all physician divisions and specialties are represented, we aim to win contractual guarantees on physician top priorities without the need for disruptions to patient care.

  • No. Physicians will begin to receive guaranteed percentage cost of living adjustments in the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract. Reductions to incentive pay are explicitly prohibited. Any further changes to physician compensation — such as market adjustments for below-market specialties — will be bargained with the UC system by an elected physician bargaining team. Division or specialty compensation arrangements will not change unless negotiated and agreed to by physicians and the UC system. Incentive pay reductions are specifically prohibited by the UPTE-UC contract.

  • As physicians from distinct departments and specialties have started to come together, the commonality of our issues has been more striking than the differences. The distinct concerns of our specialties underscore the importance of forming a union with a structure that represents every department and specialty. This is a feature already reflected in the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract: guaranteed protected time for a respected colleague to represent each group in union matters.

  • As we prepare for bargaining, we will engage in a broad campaign of consultation to identify and rank physician priorities, including a series of division meetings, a bargaining survey, and more. Physicians will elect a physician/faculty bargaining team representing every UC Health campus in the state who are charged with consulting with physicians at their campus alongside the broader committee of physician leaders.

  • The UC Physicians Committee is made up of physicians from all major specialties and UC Health campuses across the state. The Committee is rapidly growing by engaging more of our colleagues as we identify their top priorities and prepare to form our union. Physicians are leading this organizing effort and will determine the priorities once we reach the bargaining table. Once we have secured our union, the UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract ensures monthly paid protected time for physician representatives. Your division or specialty may choose a physician to represent you and your group’s particular needs and priorities.

  • Some UC management communications have incorrectly indicated that Medical Directors and other physicians in leadership roles are not eligible. This is not true. Only physicians with hiring, firing, and discipline powers, and who do not spend a majority of their time performing physician work, are legally “supervisors” and excluded from the union. Physicians with leadership positions have a unique view into the challenges of making physician perspectives heard in health system decision-making, and their participation in forming our union will give confidence and strength to their colleagues.

  • Signing a union card brings us closer to achieving majority support for our union. Given the potential impacts on the health system due to impending Medicaid cuts taking effect in January 2027, the protections of a union contract are of heightened importance. Once the UC Physicians Committee reaches majority support for our union, PERB will certify unionization. From the date our union is certified, the UC system will no longer be allowed to unilaterally reduce physician compensation or otherwise change physician working conditions without bargaining with physicians. We immediately gain protections against layoffs and subcontracting. Achieving collective bargaining rights ahead of these cuts puts physicians in a much stronger position to protect resources for direct patient care and research at a critical time.

  • Yes. The UPTE-UC Healthcare (HX) Contract benefits already extend to clinicians who work at non-UC hospitals or programs. Physicians working in these settings will enjoy the full range of protections upon unionization as well.

  • UPTE healthcare professionals have won additional staffing in a variety of settings, from Nurse Navigators, Physical Therapists, Pharmacists to Clinical Laboratory Scientists. UPTE healthcare professionals have successfully defended dedicated service-line assignments for specialized support staff, improved equipment and retraining, and blown the whistle over the impacts of the hospital boarding crisis and long specialty care wait-times, exacerbated by short-staffing and other health system resource allocation decisions. Once physicians unionize with UPTE’s Healthcare Professionals Unit, they will gain the legal right to bargain over support-staffing levels and more. Additional patient advocacy wins include: reversing the closure of the UCI Focus clinic (the only comprehensive treatment center for pediatric victims of sexual assault in Orange County), expanding MD positions in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD, reversing the layoffs of badly-needed specialized Physical Therapists at UCSF, and more.

  • Union dues will be a maximum of 1.3%, with a function rate at a fraction of a percent for most physicians. Union dues are capped at $160 per month. Dues fund organizing staff, our legal team, research and communications staff, and bargaining and organizing expenses. Physicians/faculty will not pay dues until they receive the first union contractual raise.

  • Yes! Faculty members like Psychologists, Physicists, Nursing Faculty, Pharmacists, Researchers, Physical Therapists, Public Health Advocates, and others are organizing alongside our Physician colleagues to join healthcare professionals already in UPTE. We know that we share many of the same concerns and often face barriers due to the lack of support staffing, resources, and meaningful voices within the institution. By organizing together we will have a real seat at the table to advocate for our patients, research, students, and communities. Click here to book a time with one of our Faculty Representatives to learn more.