US healthcare workers focus on pay and understaffing in fight for new contracts

Over the past five years, Kaiser Permanente has reported over $21bn in profit, while paying 49 corporate executives at least $1m each annually. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Unions representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers have held pickets at 50 facilities across California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado amid new contract negotiations as their current union contracts are set to expire on 30 September.

The negotiations at Kaiser Permanente are the third largest set of contract negotiations in the US in 2023, behind the 340,000 workers at UPS who will be voting on a tentative agreement this month that was reached days before planned strike action, and 150,000 autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis whose contracts are set to expire on 14 September.