More than 75,000 healthcare workers at the US’s largest non-profit private healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, are poised to strike on 4 October in the largest healthcare strike in US history.
The workers’ union contract expired at the weekend and staff are pushing for significant improvements to staffing levels and wage increases that account for recent high inflation.
“It just seems like there is no concern for short-staffing and patient care. It’s mind blowing to see Kaiser Permanente that was once an industry leader that liked to call themselves the gold standard of care, be so out of touch with employees, with their patients, and their more focused on putting profits over patient care,” said Henry Perez, an intensive care unit secretary at Kaiser Permanente in Modesto, California, for about four years.
The strike will hit hundreds of facilities in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Virginia and Washington DC. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions noted that if they don’t see movement at the bargaining table in response to the strike, another longer strike that includes additional workers in Washington will be called.
“They always praised us as healthcare heroes during the pandemic and now they’re treating us like zeros by not bargaining in good faith,” said Perez.
He explained that working in an emergency care unit, there are days where he has to do the work of two, three or four other unit assistants, and short staffing has led to patients having long waits for assistance which poses a significant safety issue for them and claimed the problem has only worsened due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“On top of having my unit I will have the entire hospital, which is 102 patients I’m responsible for and it causes burnout, it causes mental anguish, it causes stress. I see my nurses I support and we’re constantly running on fumes because of staffing,” he added.
Kaiser Permanente serves 12.7 million members in California, Washington, Oregon, Georgia, Hawaii, Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia. The non-profit has reported more than $3bn in profits in the first half of 2023 and has paid at least 49 corporate executives salaries exceeding $1m annually.
Keven Dardon, a patient access representative at Kaiser Permanente’s Sunnyside medical center in Clackamas, Oregon, for 14 years, said that prior to the Covid-19 pandemic his department was staffed with about 60 employees and now has been operating with less than 40 after cuts to the department, which has resulted in long lines and delays for patients trying to check into their appointments.
“It’s really taken a toll in the hospital setting and in the medical offices that we have here,” said Dardon. “That’s what we’re fighting for. Our frontline employees are demanding Kaiser Permanente executives come to the table, we’ve proposed the things that would fix the staffing issue, we’ve made tons of proposals, but because our executives just aren’t listening to us, they are just not coming to the table to even entertain those proposals.”
Jeffrey Melara, a teleservice representative for Kaiser Permanente in Sacramento, California, argued that Kaiser Permanente has been growing membership, but hasn’t kept up staffing levels to handle it.
“We want our patients to be safe and we want them to get the best care that they need,” said Melara. “No one wants to strike. But we have to stand in solidarity because the executives that are making millions of dollars aren’t thinking about anyone else but their own profit and their own increasing wages and not thinking about the rest of us, who are the patients and the staff.”
A spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente argued they lead total compensation in all markets where they operate and disputed short staffing crisis claims from workers and the union.
“Despite the acute shortage of health care workers nationally, we have been able to hire more than 50,000 frontline employees in the last two years: 29,000 people in 2022, and another 22,000 so far this year. Included in this year’s new hires are more than 9,800 people hired into jobs represented by the coalition,” said a Kaiser Permanente spokesperson in an email.
They also noted they are continuing to bargain with the coalition to avert a strike but have contingency plans in place to continue providing care during the strike.
