By Samuel Messidor
75,000 nurses, medical technicians, and other healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and facilities in multiple states have walked out on strike as of October 4th. They are represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. This was the largest US healthcare worker strike ever, and while only a three-day strike, the workers are set to hit the picket lines again in November for a “longer, stronger” strike if a deal is not reached in the interim.
About 70% of the coalition’s membership is in California, but workers are also on strike strike in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. The workers voted to authorize the strike with overwhelming margins of yes votes similar to the unions with UPS and the Big Three automakers.
In the lead-up to the walk-off, the unions have rallied with banners bearing the slogan “Patient care is in crisis.” Foremost in the contract negotiations is the issue of staffing, with understaffed hospitals pushing healthcare workers to the brink and undercutting quality care for patients, an issue exacerbated by Covid-19 but continuing today. Understaffing has been at the heart of the struggle of nurses at Ascension Seton in Texas and Kansas recently, and has been a driving grievance behind nurse and hospital worker strikes since the pandemic.
The union coalition has released a survey in which 2 out of 3 Kaiser workers report instances of care delayed or denied to patients due to understaffing, while pointing to the private heath care company’s reported $3 billion profits in the first half of 2023.
There is also outrage over performance bonus cuts for workers that are still being given to management—effectively a pay cut—and low wages for new hires. The union is demanding a $25 minimum wage.
23 Kaiser workers were arrested for “civil disobedience” after blocking an intersection outside a Kaiser system hospital in Hollywood, CA on September 4, Labor Day. The workers under SEIU leadership sat in the street and waited to be arrested in protest.
Kaiser Permanente brags about its “Labor Management Partnership” with the union coalition on its website, while union officials are saying this system has broken down in recent years. Such “partnerships” are prevalent in European countries, where union leaders work with the executives of corporations to preserve profitability and stave off worker rebellion, but are rare in the United States.
The company claims to be bargaining in good faith to meet worker demands, but in the same statement says that raising wages would make healthcare too costly for patients, implying rising prices should lead to cuts in pay for workers. It has also released a statement telling the workers to think about the financial impacts on their families a strike would cause, as well as the commonly-used moral guilt tactic of pointing to the negative affects of a strike on patients—especially duplicitous coming from a for-profit healthcare system that is chronically understaffed.
