“I’m proud that we’ve come together to fight for our rights,” Jenny Gargarita, a clinical laboratory scientist, said Monday while picketing outside the hospital. She said her group doesn’t feel seen or heard and is disappointed negotiations have reached this point.
“I was really hoping that our union and the county could come to a fair agreement,” she said.
Jenny Gargarita, a clinical lab scientist, poses for a photo at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San José on March 24, 2025. (Gina Castro/KQED)
Union leaders said they are holding the unfair labor practice strike because the county is negotiating in “bad faith,” during months-long talks that began in July. Their previous contract expired in September.
“These are dedicated public servants who provide critical, laboratory-related services primarily for our hospital system. And we look forward to being able to reach an agreement with them,” County Executive James Williams said Monday.
The county and union have agreed to many items of the contract so far, but the two parties are divided over two key issues, including whether the union will be allowed to hold any future “sympathy strikes” in solidarity with other unions that might go on strike.
Union officials said the county wants to strip that right from them, and has proposed a broader array of “management rights” that workers are worried would allow the county to shift workers from one location to another without their input.
Roughly 200 lab techs and other medical workers in the South Bay began a three-day strike over stalled contract negotiations at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San José on March 24, 2025. (Gina Castro/KQED)
“The county has not been clear about what their intentions are with management rights,” Loan Yumul, a nuclear medicine technologist, said Monday. “And our concern is being transferred from one facility to the next and not having proper training, or different equipment … So if we’re unfamiliar with it, it could be a detriment to our patients.”
Williams said the county has “not made a proposal to float or shift staff from one facility to another” and that his team welcomes the union’s engagement on any specific concerns they have over the language being proposed.
“All we’re seeking is very routine standard management rights and no-strikes language that ESC itself has agreed to with many, many, other public and private hospital systems,” Williams said Monday.