Kaiser nurses in Modesto to take part in strikes next week. What it means for patients
Kaiser Permanente nurses in Modesto and Manteca plan to participate in sympathy strikes next week in support of unionized employees in California who are deadlocked in negotiations with the Oakland-based health care giant.
National Nurses United said that nurses at Kaiser Modesto Medical Center on Dale Road, the Manteca Kaiser hospital and 19 other hospitals in Northern California will hold one-day strikes as part of far-reaching protests affecting Kaiser facilities on the West Coast.
About 35,000 Kaiser employees will begin an open-ended strike Monday that includes health workers in Southern California and Oregon. National Nurses United said the strikes next week in the Bay Area, Sacramento and Central Valley are in solidarity with a union representing employees that handle building and equipment maintenance. The “stationary engineers” have been on strike since September.
In Southern California, the United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals served a 10-day notice that its members will strike Monday after being at the bargaining table with Kaiser since April. A press release said health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic are burned out and deal with chronic understaffing.
About 21,000 nurses, pharmacists, midwives and physical therapists have vowed to stop work over pay issues.
The Kaiser nurses in Modesto and Manteca also will be part of a sympathy strike starting at 7 a.m. Friday and lasting 24 hours.
The Sacramento-based Guild for Professional Pharmacists said it was organizing a picket in the Bay Area on Monday to protest against what it calls the unfair labor practices of Kaiser Permanente.
Union leaders said Kaiser has reaped $13 billion in profits during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Rather than spend that money on increasing core staffing, Kaiser has proposed to float engineers among facilities,” National Nurses United said in a news release Thursday. “This model would institutionalize the staffing shortages that have already hurt patients and workers.”
Cathy Kennedy, president of the California Nurses Association, said in the news release that short staffing has a devastating impact. “An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us, so nurses will be standing in solidarity with our engineer colleagues,” Kennedy said.
A major issue for the various unions in ongoing negotiations is a two-tier wage system. The labor groups don’t want to accept a system giving lower pay to newly hired employees or earnings based on region.
Kaiser tries to address rising costs, executive says
Arlene Peasnall, senior vice president of human resources at Kaiser Permanente, told The Sacramento Bee that Kaiser in its bargaining with the unions is trying to deal with the “increasingly unaffordable cost of health care.”
Peasnall said that half of Kaiser Permanente’s operating costs are wages and benefits. “We are asking our labor unions to work with us to address this very real problem,” she said.
Kaiser said hospitals affected by the strike activities are prepared to care for patients. The hospitals are working to minimize impacts on patients.
“As always, our first priority is our members and patients and we have taken steps to ensure they will continue to receive high-quality, safe care and service,” Kaiser said in a statement Friday.
The strikes next week could result in adjustments to ambulance and pharmacy services in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.
Citing the labor strikes, an Escalon Community Ambulance social media post said the San Joaquin County EMS Agency is telling ambulance providers not to transport patients to Kaiser emergency departments in the area starting Monday and “until further notice.”
And on its website, Kaiser says it expects its outpatient pharmacies to be closed from Nov. 15 though Nov. 22. Patients can go online to kp.org/pharmacy, or call 1-888-218-6245 (TTY 711) to have medications delivered to their homes.
This story was originally published November 14, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
