Kaiser faces huge hit in Northern California as 60,000+ workers plan strike Thursday, Friday
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 front-line workers, and one of the unions reported its contract has expired and its members are not happy with how bargaining is going.
Georgette Bradford, an ultrasound technologist at Kaiser’s Point West medical offices, said that company leaders somehow believe they can embarrass rank-and-file workers by citing what they earn, but C-suite executives at the company show no such embarrassment when their compensation jumps by double digits in one year.
Bradford serves on the executive council of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, and she recalled that, when they were bargaining two years ago, Kaiser said they were overpaid.
“That is wholly disrespectful, demeaning, and quite offensive, considering Kaiser Permanente as an organization has been making over a billion dollars in profit — in profit, mind you — every quarter for several years, in fact, making profit over the pandemic.”
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.
In a survey of its nearly 2,000 members, NUHW said it found:
▪ 80% said their clinics are too understaffed to provide appropriate and timely care to patients.
▪ 65% reported that every day they must schedule return appointments further into the future than is clinically appropriate for patients
▪ 87% reported that weekly individual psychotherapy appointments are unavailable for patients who need it.
“Kaiser is in denial about how much its patients are suffering trying to access mental health care,” said Kenneth Rogers, a Kaiser psychologist in Sacramento. “There’s no clinical standard that calls for making patients wait a month or more between appointments, and therapists are leaving because we can’t provide ethical care.”
Rogers said the company has rejected the union’s recommendations on expanding staff, recruiting additional bilingual and minority therapists and easing caseloads. NUHW therapists say high caseloads are causing increased turnover at Kaiser clinics. NUHW’s action supports the engineers but also is aimed at bringing their concerns to the public’s attention.
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 www.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.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
