In a historic move, over 75,000 Kaiser Permanente employees walked off the job on Wednesday in what their union representatives say is the largest strike of healthcare workers in U.S. history.
The strike will impact hundreds of hospitals across multiple states, with picket lines in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
“Kaiser executives are refusing to listen to us and are bargaining in bad faith over the solutions we need to end the Kaiser short-staffing crisis,” said Jessica Cruz, a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, in a prepared statement.
“I see my patients’ frustrations when I have to rush them and hurry on to my next patient. That’s not the care I want to give,” Cruz continued. “We’re burning ourselves out trying to do the jobs of two or three people, and our patients suffer when they can’t get the care they need due to Kaiser’s short-staffing.”
One of the coalition unions, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, held a demonstration that drew thousands to the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in early September to protest working conditions at the hospital.
The coalition is asking for a 24.5% raise for members over the course of the four-year contract, protections against subcontracting and outsourcing, the right to organize a union at any hospital systems Kaiser might acquire, a boost to workers’ performance sharing plan, and increased medical benefits, according to Fox Business.
The company said Tuesday that progress was being made in negotiations and that a “strike is not inevitable, and it is certainly not justified.”
“We need to keep working together to get through this,” Kaiser said in its statement. “Because the reality is that we are still in a health care crisis in this country. Access to care is stretched thin and it will take time to recover as an industry and stabilize the U.S. health care system. We can only do that if we work together, management and labor, side-by-side, for one another, our patients, and our communities.”
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