Picket lines began forming at Kaiser Permanente hospitals this morning as some 75,000 health care workers in five states went on strike over pay and staffing shortages, marking the latest major labor unrest in the United States.
The Kaiser Permanente union, which represents about 85,000 health system employees nationwide, approved three-day strikes in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state and one-day strikes in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The strikers include licensed vocational nurses, home health aides and sonographers, as well as radiology, X-ray, surgery, pharmacy and emergency department technicians.
Doctors did not attend, and Kaiser said hospitals, including emergency rooms, would remain open during the protests. The company said it would bring in thousands of temporary workers to fill vacancies during the strike. But the strike could cause appointments to be delayed and non-urgent procedures to be rescheduled.
This year has seen unprecedented levels of worker organizing – from strike authorizations to work stoppages – across multiple industries, including: transportation, entertainment and hospitality.Today’s strike is the latest strike health care This year, the industry continues to face burnout from heavy workloads—a problem that has been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.
Fight for patients
Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest insurance companies and health care system operators in the United States, with 39 hospitals across the country. The nonprofit company, headquartered in Oakland, Calif., provides health insurance to nearly 13 million people, sending customers for care at clinics and hospitals it operates or contracts.
The union representing Kaiser workers called for a $25 minimum wage in August, with increases of 7 percent in each of the first two years and 6.25 percent in each of the following two years.
They say staffing shortages are boosting the hospital system’s bottom line at the expense of patients and that executives have been engaging in bad faith bargaining during negotiations.
“They’re not listening to the frontline health care workers,” said Mikki Fletchall, a certified vocational nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Camarillo, California. “We’re striking because of our patients. We don’t want to do it, but we’re going to do it.”
Kaiser proposed a minimum hourly wage of $21 to $23 next year, depending on location. The hospital system has hired 51,000 workers since 2022 and plans to add 10,000 more by the end of the month.
Kaiser reported net profit of $2.1 billion in the second quarter of this year and operating income of more than $25 billion. But the company said it was still dealing with cost headwinds as well as challenges posed by inflation and labor shortages.
COVID-19 ‘very difficult’
Kaiser executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames defended the company and said the company’s practices, pay and retention rates are excellent despite the same challenges facing the industry as a whole. to competitors.
“With the funds we bring in, our focus is getting them to invest in value-based care,” said Gaskill-Hames, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and hospitals in Southern California and Hawaii.
She added that despite the impact of the epidemic, Kaiser’s turnover was only 7%, compared with the industry standard of 21%.
“I think health care workers are completely exhausted at the end of this pandemic,” she said. “The trauma of caring for so many COVID-19 patients and dying patients is very difficult.”
The workers’ last contract was negotiated before the pandemic in 2019.
Hospitals have generally been struggling in recent years due to high labor costs, staffing shortages and rising levels of uncompensated care, said Rick Gundlin, senior vice president of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a nonprofit group that works with health care financial executives.
Gundlin noted that most of their income is fixed and comes from government-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid. That means revenue growth, he said, “can only be achieved by increasing sales, which is difficult even in the best of circumstances.”
Particularly since the end of the pandemic, as employers’ demand for workers has increased, workers demanding higher wages, better working conditions and job security have become increasingly willing to strike.
The California Legislature has sent a bill to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to raise the state’s minimum wage 455,000 health care workers $25 an hour over the next ten years. The governor has until October 14 to decide whether to sign or veto the bill.
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Associated Press writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
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