To the leaders of Venice Family Clinic and UCLA—

As members of the community that Venice Family Clinic workers strive to support, we call on you to pay Clinic workers the fair pay they deserve.

Venice Family Clinic workers are the foundation of our community. Clinic workers guide seniors, disabled community members, and those with limited English through the entire healthcare process, from insurance approvals to successful treatments. Their work is critical to community health, yet their salaries don’t reflect the many hundreds of people they serve. Many workers are paid close to minimum wage, while many others make as little as $21/hr after more than fifteen years on the job.

44 workers with the title Community Health Program Representative (CHPR) have been trying to join the Union for years and recently won accretion into Teamsters Local 2010 to fight for fair wages. Workers became Teamster Union members in May and started negotiations with Venice Family Clinic, but the Clinic has so far failed to meet the needs of the Clinic’s essential workers. The Clinic is proposing that most CHPRs start at step 1 of their 17-22 step salary scale, which would do nothing to address the huge pay inequities at the Venice Family Clinic and the years of depressed wages CHPRs have dealt with due to the Clinic’s misclassification of their work.

We call on Venice Family Clinic to respect the services that CHPRs provide our community and pay CHPRs fairly! CHPRs deserve salaries that are comparable to those of other Clinic workers throughout UCLA and Venice, not minimum wage rates that approach poverty wages in LA. Workers must able to afford to live and work in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country. They deserve equal pay for equal work and to be fairly compensated for the critical work they do for our community and the patients they serve.

Listen to your community: Fair pay for CHPRs now!