About 21,000 healthcare workers are planning to strike against Kaiser Permanente for their wage proposals that are expected to impact more than 300 hospitals across Southern California.
About 3,000 nurses and other healthcare workers in San Diego County plan to join the strike against the hospital system on Nov. 15.
In a statement, Kaiser Permanente says, "If a strike actually occurs, our facilities will be staffed by our trained and experienced managers and the contingency staff we are bringing in as needed, and our physicians will continue to be available to care for patients. They are prepared to have care for patients during the strike."
After a long year and a half for healthcare workers during the pandemic, the United Nurses Associations of California / Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) share how their union members are feeling frustrated.
Get San Diego local news, weather forecasts, sports and lifestyle stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC San Diego newsletters.
“We all had to buckle down and do what we could do to get through it and it made it very difficult physically and mentally, said Rob Jones, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center.
Jones has worked at the emergency department for more than a decade and said the toll of working at a hospital during the pandemic was heavy and even influenced some to choose a different profession.
"If we’re in a nationwide shortage and you're cutting wages, how is that going to affect your recruitment,” questioned Jones.
The senior vice president of Human Resources at Kaiser Permanente shared a statement with NBC 7 saying the challenge they are facing is the "increasingly unaffordable cost of health care. And the fact is, wages and benefits account for half of Kaiser Permanente’s operational costs.”
“Striking is the last resort, of course, we always want our members to be there for the patients and the community and you know, as a team,” said Charmaine Morales, a nurse and the executive vice president for UNAC/UHCP.
Morales said they have been bargaining with Kaiser at a national and local level, but the lack of coming to an agreement has led them to this point.
“We have proposed 4% wage increases for each year, for a three-year contract. We've had said no to their two-tier wage system and we still had a number of other outstanding issues,” said Morales.
The strike is expected to begin in two weeks, that is unless an agreement is met by the union and Kaiser prior. The hospital system says their proposal aims to slow the significant over-market growth in compensation while continuing to reward their employees and fulfill their commitment to their members and patients.
Kaiser Permanente’s full statement reads:
Statement by Arlene Peasnall, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is indisputably one of the most labor-friendly organizations in the United States. Our history and our future are deeply connected to organized labor. Labor unions have always played an important role in our efforts to provide more people with access to high-quality care and to make care more affordable.
We have been engaged in national bargaining with the Alliance of Health Care Unions since April and have made progress in many important areas, reaching tentative agreements on the funding of a workforce development trust and several sub-committee recommendations. We have been meeting regularly since late September and believe an agreement that meets the interests of all is very possible.
The challenge we are trying to address in partnership with our unions is the increasingly unaffordable cost of health care. And the fact is, wages and benefits account for half of Kaiser Permanente’s operational costs.
Over the course of our 24 years of labor partnership, we - labor and management - have negotiated wages and benefits primarily at a national level, so pay has not always been matched to the markets where we operate. As a result, over time in many areas our wage rates have grown to the point where our union represented employees earn about 26% above the average market wage, and in some places it’s 38% above market. These numbers don’t include the value of our industry-leading benefits and retirement and pension plans along with the opportunity to earn an additional 3% bonus every year, based on our performance.
We are asking our labor partners to work with us to address this very real problem through an interest-based process, just as we have done with other challenges over the course of our partnership.
On November 2, Kaiser Permanente offered Alliance leaders an updated economic proposal that provides Alliance-represented employees as much as 4% a year in pay increases, with no takeaways to the market-leading benefits and retirement programs. The proposed wage increases are on top of the already market-leading pay and benefits our employees receive, as confirmed by independent wage surveys and the government’s own data compiled by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Our proposal simply aims to slow the significant over-market growth in compensation while continuing to reward our employees and fulfill our commitment to our members and patients to provide high-quality, affordable health care.
We remain committed to working together with labor for the benefit of our workforce, members and the communities that rely on us. We believe we can reach an agreement with the Alliance that meets our shared interests and avoids an unnecessary and harmful strike, especially as we continue to battle this pandemic.
If a strike actually occurs, our facilities will be staffed by our trained and experienced managers and the contingency staff we are bringing in as needed, and our physicians will continue to be available to care for patients.
