40% of Kaiser workers to launch three-day strike after contract expires
In the Sacramento region, Kaiser workers will set up picket lines at the company’s three local medical centers at 1600 Eureka Road in Roseville, 2025 Morse Ave. in Sacramento and 6600 Bruceville Road in south Sacramento.
Roughly 40% of Kaiser Permanente workers will begin a three-day strike in seven states starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday, but company negotiators said they are continuing to negotiate a tentative contract.
In the Sacramento region, Kaiser workers will set up picket lines at the company’s three local medical centers at 1600 Eureka Road in Roseville, 2025 Morse Ave. in Sacramento and 6600 Bruceville Road in south Sacramento. The union contract expired Saturday.
“Kaiser executives are refusing to listen to us and are bargaining in bad faith over the solutions we need to end the Kaiser shortstaffing crisis,” said Jessica Cruz, a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center. “I see my patients’ frustrations when I have to rush them and hurry on to my next patient. That’s not the care I want to give. We’re burning ourselves out trying to do the jobs of two or three people, and our patients suffer when they can’t get the care they need due to Kaiser’s short-staffing.”
Kaiser leaders said they reached agreement with the coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions on four key areas — travel for continuing education, the use of temporary workers such as traveling nurses, tracking of staffing vacancies, and dispute resolution — and continued to work toward making a tentative deal.
“Despite the acute shortage of health care workers nationally, we have been able to hire more than 50,000 frontline employees in the last two years:
29,000 people in 2022, and another 22,000 so far this year,” Kaiser executives said in a statement sent to The Bee. “Included in this year’s new hires are more than 9,800 people hired into jobs represented by the coalition.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions represents roughly 88,000 workers in nearly a dozen union locals. They work in many fields, including as clinical laboratory scientists, medical laboratory technicians, optometrists, medical assistants, medical social workers, phlebotomists, information technology workers, licensed vocational nurses, physical therapy assistants and some registered nurses.
While Kaiser members may not see picket lines outside the company’s local outpatient facilities, many of the staff are union members and will converge on Kaiser hospitals for picketing.
The two sides have not negotiated a new labor contract since before the COVID-19 pandemic began, with bargaining starting up in April.
The Kaiser unions say the pandemic worsened working conditions and exacerbated a healthcare staffing crisis.
Understaffing is boosting Kaiser’s profits but hurting patients, union members have said. In a recent survey of 33,000 employees, two-thirds of the respondents said they had seen care delayed or denied due to short staffing. The coalitions have said Kaiser needs to boost minimum pay levels to attract and retain workers.
Kaiser officials said the company leads on total compensation in nearly every market in which it operates. The company has proposed across-theboard wage increases; a $23 minimum wage starting in 2024 in California; and a $21 minimum wage in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia starting in 2024.
Leaders of the health care giant also noted that Kaiser’s attrition rate of 7% is about a third of the industry average and that it continues to fall, stressing that these achievements are possible because job applicants consider Kaiser to be a leading health care employer.
“Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition agreed in April to a goal of hiring 10,000 new people for Coalition-represented jobs by the end of 2023,” company leaders said in their statement. “We expect to reach the 10,000 new hire goal by the end of October, if not sooner, and we won’t stop there. We are committed to addressing every area of staffing that is still challenging.”
The coalition also has filed a dozen charges of unfair labor practices against Kaiser with the National Labor Relations Board. Among the allegations, the unions has said that Kaiser has not provided regional operating margins and other information that would assist in evaluating mandatory bargaining issues and that company negotiators tried to force the coalition to limit the size of its bargaining team.
Under federal regulations, the union is required to give the company a 10-day notice of a strike to allow the company to come up with a contingency plan to continue to serve patients. Kaiser said it had ensured that members would continue to receive safe, high-quality care for the duration of the strike.
Hospitals and emergency departments will remain open, Kaiser leaders assured, and information on appointments and pharmaceuticals can be found at kp.org.