75,000 Kaiser nurses, pharmacists and other workers have walked off the job

Frontline health care workers hold a demonstration outside Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center on September 4. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)

Health care workers at hundreds of Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical facilities across the U.S. walked off the job on Wednesday morning, in an effort to ramp up pressure on their employer to fix a staffing shortage that has intensified since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 75,000 workers — including nurses, emergency department technicians, pharmacists and hundreds of others — went on strike in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C.