A massive one-day strike began this morning at all nine University of California campuses, unhinging operations and urging some professors to cancel classes in support of service workers — including cashiers, cooks and bus drivers — who are striking for higher wages, better training and more opportunities for promotion.

The strike comes after more than eight months of failed negotiations between UC officials and leaders of the American Federation of State County, Municipal Employees local 3329, or AFSCME, the organization that represents the more than 7,300 workers involved in the strike.

“They are the lowest paid workers in the system, mostly immigrants,” said AFSCME Spokesperson Faith Raider in an interview with The Daily. “They haven’t had a raise in two years.”

Raider said that the union met with UC officials 27 times, including meetings on April 4 and 5, at which a neutral mediator tried to find common ground between the parties involved.

The workers have the support of many student and faculty organizations, Raider added. A committee in the UC’s academic council maintained that service worker salaries should be the top priority in the budgeting process, above the salaries of the council members themselves.

“They recognized that people are living from hand-to-mouth,” she added.

More than 1,000 workers are striking at UC Berkeley, which is expected to be one of the campuses most crippled by the strike, despite the university’s efforts to hire temporary workers to fill in.

UC Berkeley sophomore Sabina Sadykhova said that her English professor has canceled today’s class.

“Many professors are still holding classes but a lot of them are not — just to show their support for the strikes,” said Berkeley junior Beata Shneyer.

Many other classes have been moved off campus for the day.

Although the Stanford Labor Action Coalition has not taken an official position on the strike, freshman Matt Seriff-Cullick, a member of SLAC, said that “there has been a lot of momentum for living wage campaigns.”

Seriff-Cullick and some of his fellow members of SLAC will travel to Oakland tomorrow to take part in a rally in front of UC President Robert Dynes’ office, where UC officials are scheduled to discuss the labor issues that prompted the strike.

“We remain hopeful that the UC administration will change its position” in regards to the labor demands, said freshman Alejandra Lopez, another SLAC member who plans to attend tomorrow’s demonstration.