2,100 UC technology workers vote to join existing university union
A group of 2,100 University of California technology workers voted to unionize with an existing labor group that represents university employees. It could offer workers protections under an existing contract if the vote is approved by the state labor board.
More than 2,000 system analysts, database administrators and other technology sector workers across the UC system voted in the unionization campaign in May — 96% of whom supported joining the University Professional Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America 9119, according to a union spokesperson. If California’s Public Employment Relations Board recognizes the addition of these workers to UPTE, it would bring the union’s size to roughly 26,000 workers, a union spokesperson said.
Those contractual protections will help end what Max Belasco, a business systems analyst at UC Los Angeles, described as a “two-tiered system” for some university employees.
While some IT workers do similar jobs at UC campuses, they have different retirement plans, healthcare premium caps and layoff protections, he said. Those differences led employees to ask: “Why do some of us not have access to those benefits when others do?”
Belasco and other non-represented employees began a months-long organizing campaign last year, which culminated in the May vote.
Heather Hansen, a spokesperson for UC’s Office of the President, said that the university is participating in the established PERB process for a unionization vote, but it would be “premature to characterize the status or outcome of the matter.”
“The University of California values the contributions of its technical and IT employees and remains committed to maintaining productive relationships with represented and non-represented employees alike,” Hansen said in a statement.
Hansen said questions remained about which bargaining unit these employees would be placed with and said that there were “competing representation claims involving multiple unions.”
Hansen declined to elaborate about what other unions might try to claim representation. In response, an UPTE spokesperson said that the union is “fully confident in the integrity of its campaign.”
Last November, the union and UC reached a new contract after 17 months of negotiations.
‘A seat at the table’
Belasco said he was previously represented by a union while working for UC, but when he was promoted to another position at the university, he was no longer eligible for union membership. While employees who are promoted to supervisory positions are often no longer able to be union members, Belasco said this was not the case with his new position. The job he stepped into was simply not classified as a union-represented position.
With this vote, Belasco said he hopes that he will again have strong layoff protections and, in the future, have the ability to push for appropriate staffing levels and guardrails around artificial intelligence and automation technologies.
“This gives us an opportunity to really have a seat at the table, have our own voice and advocate for our careers,” Belasco said.
The unionization vote comes at a time when technology companies are laying off significant numbers of workers as artificial intelligence continues to reshape the industry. The technology behemoth Meta recently laid off thousands of its employees.
Though he works for a public university, Belasco said he thinks this month’s unionization vote will have “reverberations” in the private sector and inspire more technology workers to organize. He noted that the organizing effort has helped build connections among colleagues that didn’t exist before.
“What’s important is that a lot of these tech workers also have a deep love for this university. We care about what it does, and we care about the services it provides,” he said.
This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "2,100 UC technology workers vote to join existing university union."
