Kaiser health care workers, joined by nurses, picketed Tuesday at Kaiser Permanente Sacramento area hospitals, part of demonstrations statewide over stalled labor negotiations.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers, or NUHW, has been in talks with Kaiser for more than a year over benefits and other provisions.

About 150 pickets attended a noontime rally outside Kaiser's south Sacramento facility, sounding familiar themes: Kaiser's proposed cuts to pension benefits and medical coverage penalize workers and their families while the health network and its executives prosper.

Kaiser officials have said cutbacks are needed to help keep rising health care costs in check.

NUHW member Charles Rios, a licensed clinical social worker at a Kaiser facility near the south Sacramento hospital, was among those who addressed picketing workers.

"Who's thriving? Not us," he said.

Some members of the California Nurses Association, CNA, joined the one-day walkout to support 4,000 NUHW members. That echoed a walkout in September at more than 30 Kaiser and Sutter Health hospitals that union officials called the largest-ever strike by nurses.

But turnout appeared to fall short of September's massive display. Kaiser officials said more than two-thirds of its nurses reported for work at 21 Northern California medical centers Tuesday morning. The numbers were even higher at Kaiser's Sacramento-area facilities, said spokesman Edwin Garcia.

About 80 percent crossed picket lines at Kaiser's Roseville Medical Center, while about 70 percent remained on the job at Kaiser's south Sacramento facility and on Morse Avenue in Sacramento, Garcia said.

CNA officials sharply disputed Kaiser's figures, saying up to 90 percent of nurses participated in the walkout in Northern and Central California. "Their fabrications have no credibility," spokesman Charles Idelson said.

At Kaiser's south Sacramento facility, administrators called in temporary nurses to fill in for striking caregivers, adjusted services and schedules and rescheduled some surgical procedures, said Patricia Rodriguez, a Kaiser senior vice president and area manager of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, south Sacramento.

Rodriguez said, however, that the walkout caused "very little disruption" at area Kaiser hospitals.

That didn't stop Kaiser and hospital industry officials from criticizing CNA's role in the walkout.

CNA's Kaiser nurses have a three-year labor contract that went into effect in September. The two sides are fighting in court over whether nurses can strike while under contract.

The California Hospital Association released a statement saying the nurses' walkout is an "attempt to grow their membership and advance their political agenda."

"We're here in support of our colleagues," responded CNA co-president DeAnn McEwen, as she walked with south Sacramento picketing workers. "This is an extremely profitable HMO. They can afford to provide health care for workers, they're not doing that, and that's wrong. That's why we're here."

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