Kaiser strike enters fourth week, disrupting patient care

from Kristen HuangCalMatters

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More than 31,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers remained on strike Monday as an indefinite walkout entered its fourth week, disrupting patient appointments, surgeries and treatments in California and Hawaii.

Negotiations teams for Kaiser and the workers have resumed talks after weeks of stalemate, but an agreement does not appear imminent. It is the latest in a series of major strikes that have roiled Kaiser in recent years, including a 10-week strike by mental health workers in 2022 and a dispute in 2023 with the mediation of the then US Secretary of Labor.

The strike, which began on January 26, is an attempt by one of the organization’s largest unions to improve wages and staff conditions. Members of the California United Nurses Association/Healthcare Professionals Union have never walked off the job before. The union, which is an umbrella organization for multiple local branches, represents nurses, physical therapists, midwives and other health professionals.

The workers accuse Kaiser of violating staffing agreements and degrading patient care — both of which the health care giant denies. They are demanding a 25% increase over four years, arguing that the wage increase is necessary to retain and recruit employees and account for the sharp inflationary pressures of the past few years.

Kaiser claims its employees are the highest paid, on average, among other health care organizations. It offers an increase of 21.5% over four years. In a statement, a Kaiser spokesman said the talks are taking place as health care costs rise and millions of Americans are at risk of losing insurance.

“This underscores our responsibility to provide fair, competitive pay to employees while protecting access and affordability for our members. We do both,” the unsigned statement said.

According to the statement, Kaiser management believes it can afford the 21.5 percent wage increase without increasing premiums for members, but cannot make the same guarantee under the union’s proposal.

Union leaders say Kaiser can afford across-the-board wage increases given its $66 billion in reserves. Kaiser reported a one-year loss of $4.5 billion in 2022. The health system has since recovered, publishing net income of $12.9 billion in 2024 and $9.3 billion last year.

The company says it intends its reserves for long-term commitments and emergencies. In a statement, the company said using salary reserves would be “financially irresponsible”. Kaiser’s wage proposal would cost about $2 billion, and the union’s would cost an additional $1 billion, according to the statement.

Inflation puts pressure on healthcare workers

Joe Guzinski, the union’s executive director, said his members last signed a contract with Kaiser in 2021. inflation peaked at around 8% in 2022. At the same time, some of the organization’s local units refused to bargain during the COVID-19 pandemic, believing it would be too disruptive, and refrained from seeking additional raises. The band’s last contract expired in September last year.

Other major unions at Kaiser that signed contracts after 2022 received inflation-adjusted wage increases.

“What we want is the same deal. Everyone else has to deal with inflation,” Guzinski said. “It’s really about restoring justice.”

The union also talked about three groups of employees in Northern California that recently formed unions and are bargaining for their first contracts: certified nurse midwives, certified registered nurse anesthetists and physician assistants.

Kaiser has proposed cutting pension and medical benefits for those groups, freezing wages for current employees and cutting wages for new hires, said Brian Mason, lead negotiator for the nurses and midwives. There are 157 nurse midwives in Northern California.

“The reality is that we’re several hundred thousand dollars apart, and it’s like $10 for the average person,” Mason said of the nurse-midwife contract. “It’s not much, but they act like we want billions and billions of dollars.”

Nurse midwives perform 80 percent of vaginal births at Kaiser hospitals in Northern California, said Emily Hardy, a certified nurse midwife at Redwood City Medical Center. Their work results in fewer C-sections and maternal complications and improved patient satisfaction, she added. It is also cheaper to use nurse midwives for low-risk births than to pay doctors who focus on complications and high-risk mothers.

Hardy, who has been a nurse for 15 years, said she had never gone on strike before, and neither had many of her colleagues. The walkout was a “last resort” after two years of negotiations for nurses and midwives.

“I felt very hurt because you worked for so long under the assumption that your employer really values ​​your services and cares about the impact you have on members,” Hardy said. “Hearing ‘we want to cut retirements and keep wages stagnant’ doesn’t tell me you value (us).”

Patients are reporting disruptions across the state

Patients on social networks and local news reports describe canceled chemotherapies, surgeries and other procedures. They also posted images of pharmacy and lab queues winding down corridors and outside. Striking nurses’ unions also report receiving recruitment texts from contractors looking to fill staff positions.

Kaiser is the largest health care provider in California, serving more than 9 million patients. It is also the largest private employer in the state. In a statement issued before the strikethe company said it had “prepared contingency plans” for months to preserve access to care.

Cecilia Ochoa, 50, failed to get a prescription at Downey Medical Center last week. Ochoa, who was recently hospitalized, said she was at home when she started feeling sick and weak a few days ago. She went to the emergency room and was given medicine for nausea. Her lab results later came back positive for a urinary tract infection.

Ochoa said she was vomiting and shaking when she tried to get antibiotics at the 24-hour pharmacy in Downey. The line was close to 100 people, she said, and almost reached the street. Ochoa tried another Kaiser pharmacy around the corner and waited an hour before a staff member came outside to tell everyone that the pharmacy would not be dispensing any more prescriptions for the day. One man complained of waiting in line for three hours just to register.

“It was bad. It was so bad that they were handing out snacks, water. People were there for so long,” Ochoa said.

She was born in Kaiser and has been a member all her life, Ochoa said. As the years go by, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to see specialists, and the wait times for appointments are so long that she has to schedule them months in advance. She supports the striking nurses and other workers, some of whom she has known for decades.

“I think they lost everything somewhere. It’s not about the patient, it’s about the money,” Ochoa said. “I hope this is all over as soon as possible for everyone.”

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a cost they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.