60,000 Kaiser workers plan to strike this week
You’ve probably read reports that Kaiser Permanente averted a major strike in California. While that’s true, it won’t feel like it on Thursday and Friday when more than 60,000 nurses, psychologists and other health care workers walk off the job all around Northern California.
They will be picketing in support of 700 stationary and biomedical engineers who have been on strike for about 60 days. The engineers say the company proposed a wage increase that will ensure their pay sinks below what engineers at Sutter Health and other big providers make.
Kaiser, however, has said that the engineers’ total compensation — wages, benefits and retirement — equals roughly $180,000, placing them among the highest-paid people in their profession. The engineers are represented by Stationary Engineers Local 39, part of the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Organizers of the sympathy strike said that they are fed up with the company’s lack of respect for the contributions of its frontline workers, and one of the unions reported its contract has expired and its members are not happy with how bargaining is going.
Kaiser executives issued a statement Monday saying they continue “to bargain in good faith with Local 39 Operating Engineers — and are confident we will reach agreements with these unions very soon.” However, Local 39 chief negotiator Shane Mortensen told The Bee that he has not sat down with the company since Oct. 22.
Kaiser’s mental health clinicians, represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, also are negotiating a new contract with the company. Their prior pact expired Oct. 1, and their leaders said members are just as troubled now as they were in previous negotiations about patient access to behavioral health care.
Unions will be setting up picket lines as early as 7 a.m. Thursday and Friday at Kaiser’s local hospitals. Kaiser told The Bee that it has planned for the strike and will have experienced clinicians and available at its hospitals. However, company officials said, some procedures may have to be rescheduled, and it will keep patients updated at kp.org.
On Thursday, about 40,000 members of three unions will hit the picket line. They include optometrists, clinical laboratory scientists, X-ray technicians, housekeepers and other front-line workers in the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29, and the Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20.
On Friday, about 22,000 registered nurses in the California Nurses Association and nearly 2,000 mental health clinicians in the National Union of Healthcare Workers will join their striking coworkers.
Kaiser has reached tentative labor pacts with 2,500 pharmacy workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers., 21,000 nurses represented by United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, 7,400 licensed vocational nurses, pharmacy assistants, housekeepers and others represented by United Steelworkers Local 7600 and 2,150 pharmacists in the Guild for Professional Pharmacists.