Unionized health care workers began a historic five-day, multi-state strike outside Kaiser Permanente hospitals on Tuesday morning, demanding safer staffing and better pay and benefits — an action that Kaiser called “unnecessary” and “disruptive.”
In the Bay Area, members of the United Nurse Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals marched outside Kaiser’s main hospital in Oakland, where about 300 people were on the picket line at 7 a.m., according to union spokesman Aaron Gallant. Elsewhere in the region and Northern California, strikes were taking place in Santa Clara and Roseville.
Similar actions were planned at a total of about 20 Kaiser locations statewide, most in Southern California, and others are planned in Hawaii and Oregon later in the week.
The mood at the Kaiser Oakland was upbeat Tuesday morning, as hundreds of workers marched along Broadway holding signs that read, “patients before profits — pay us fairly,” “on strike for our patients” and “skeleton crews can’t heal bodies.” Music blasted from speakers, some workers brought their dogs, and passersby in cars honked to show solidarity.
“We’re out here striking for patient care,” said Arezou Mansourian, a physician assistant at Kaiser in Walnut Creek and Dublin and a member of the UNAC/UHCP bargaining team. “If we were about to pay PAs at fair market rate, we could hire more PAs … right now there are long patient wait times due to Kaiser not wanting to pay staff fair wages.”
As many as 31,000 workers, including 2,800 in Northern California, could strike this week — the largest walkout in the union’s history — according to UNAC/UHCP.
The union represents registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, dieticians and other health care professionals. UNAC/UHCP is part of the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which negotiates contracts for 23 local unions, including UNAC/UHCP. The contracts for Kaiser workers in this local union expired Sept. 30 or Oct. 1.
The strike is scheduled to run from Tuesday at 7 a.m. until Sunday at 7 a.m.
Kaiser said it will keep hospitals and clinics open, move some appointments to virtual care and have about 7,600 temporary and former staff fill in during the strike.
The union says its bargaining team has met with Kaiser in good faith over the last several months to negotiate a new contract, but Kaiser has resisted their proposals to ensure better pay and fix staffing issues. They say that while inflation has grown 18.5% since 2021, Kaiser’s wages have only grown 10%; as a result, they say the union’s members are now at least 7% behind their industry peers. The union is proposing a 25% wage increase over the next four years.
Kaiser says workers represented by the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which includes UNAC/UHCP, already earn 16% more than their peers. Kaiser has offered a 21.5% wage increase.