Nearly 4,000 nurses and other Kaiser Permanente health care workers in Oregon and southwest Washington are set to go on strike starting Oct. 14 for up to five days.<\/p>\n
The Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, which represents nurses and other health professionals at Kaiser\u2019s Oregon and southwest Washington operation, announced the strike plan Friday. Health workers are required to give 10 days\u2019 notice before any sort of walkout.<\/p>\n
Unions representing 46,000 of Kaiser workers in multiple states \u2014 including California, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. \u2014 have also authorized strikes after their contracts ended on Sept. 30 or Oct. 1. Union officials said almost all have delivered similar strike notices Friday. <\/p>\n
Oregon union members voted to authorize a strike by an enormous margin last month<\/a>. The walkout would include nurses, lab techs, social workers, physical therapists, mental health counselors and other health workers who work at Kaiser\u2019s Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas, Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro and dozens of clinics and other facilities across the region.<\/p>\n Sarina Roher, president of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, said the union\u2019s contracts expired last month and that the two parties have made little progress since negotiations began six months ago. <\/p>\n Roher said workers want staffing and scheduling policies that would give providers more time with their patients. She said Kaiser has been struggling to recruit or retain workers because of the health system\u2019s refusal to offer competitive salaries.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re fighting to make sure Kaiser puts patients first \u2014 health care should be driven by our mission, not a desire for more profits,\u201d Roher said in a statement. \u201cWe hope that this strike notice will push Kaiser to come to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair agreement that is good for healthcare workers, patients and the communities we serve.\u201d<\/p>\n Kaiser did not immediately respond to an email for comment.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 4,000 nurses and other Kaiser Permanente health care workers in Oregon and southwest Washington are set to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46,41658,41659],"class_list":["post-55542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kaiser-permanente-sunnyside-medical-center","tag-portland-hospitals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}