Kaiser Health Care Workers During the Largest Health Care Strike of the Workmen’s Union: A Report from El-Amin
But employees like Brooke El-Amin, who has worked at Kaiser for 21 years, say patient care is already suffering due to staffing shortages. The goal of the strike is to put pressure on Kaiser to improve patient care in the long-run.
It is the largest health care strike in history, according to the unions. Kaiser, headquartered in Oakland, California, is one of the largest nonprofit health care providers in the United States, serving nearly 13 million patients. Most Kaiser workers will be on strike for three days, until Saturday morning, except those in Virginia and Washington D.C., who will be on strike for 24 hours.
The health care provider has said its hospitals and emergency departments will remain open throughout the strike, staffed by physicians and other staff. It was said that new hires will service in critical care roles when the strike is over.
Patients may be rescheduling non- emergency and elective services from Kaiser. The organization is expanding its network of pharmacy locations to include community pharmacies, to ensure patients can access medication in the event that outpatient pharmacies temporarily close. Inpatient pharmacies at Kaiser hospitals will stay open.
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The Hollywood writers strike is the latest in a long line of worker strikes that have affected work conditions and pay this year.
“Health care workers choose this profession because it’s a passion for them. It’s a calling,” said Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Folks don’t like staying at jobs where they don’t have the ability to give the best care possible.
Kaiser is accused of engaging in unfair labor practices by refusing to bargain in good faith to solve the staffing crisis. Kaiser denies these allegations.
The collective bargaining agreement for employees represented by a coalition of unions expired on September 30 without a new agreement in place. The unions and Kaiser executives are still far apart on key sticking points, including wages, despite progress on issues such as outsourcing and subcontracting protections during talks over the weekend.
The two sides reached a tentative agreement on Monday on a 40% increase to an education fund, that will support additional training for employees, according to the SEIU-UHW union in California.
The coalition is asking for a pay raise of 25% for all members and better benefits like medical coverage for retirees. More people would stay at Kaiser if there were better working conditions and better pay. The staffing shortage would be alleviated thanks to the newer workers it would attract.
“The people of Kaiser Permanente have faced down the pandemic better than most frontline workers because we started from a different place,” Kaiser said.
In April 2020, when I would walk home after a long day treating patients in a New York City emergency room, an orchestra of pots and pans would erupt from seemingly every window to honor frontline workers. Nothing could make those early pandemic days easier for me and my colleagues, but those haphazard symphonies of appreciation helped keep us going. At that time, health care workers had every reason to hope that once the Covid-19 pandemic waned, long-overdue and much needed changes to our health care system would finally materialize.