People hold placards, as a coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions representing 75,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente start a 3 day strike across the USA over a recent contract, in San Diego, California, U.S. October 4, 2023.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Greater than 75,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente — the nation’s largest health-care nonprofit organization — went on strike Wednesday at hospitals and medical offices in five states after the corporate and labor negotiators didn’t resolve a dispute over staffing levels.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions says the work stoppage is the most important strike of health-care workers in U.S. history.
The strike targets Kaiser hospitals and medical offices in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Washington. Kaiser Permanente serves nearly 13 million patients and operates 39 hospitals and greater than 600 medical offices across eight states and the District of Columbia.
The striking workers include vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, X-ray technicians, respiratory therapists, medical assistants, pharmacists and a whole bunch of other positions.
Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers and supporters on a picket line outside Kaiser Permanente medical offices in Denver, Colorado, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Unions that represent Kaiser workers are demanding long-term investments to handle a staffing shortage as well as to raised pay and advantages. Negotiations between Kaiser executives and workers are ongoing.
Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, said the staffing crisis has led to unsafe working conditions and deteriorating care for patients.
“We proceed to have front-line health-care workers who’re burnt out and stretched to the max and leaving the industry,” Lucas told CNBC.
“Now we have folks getting injured on the job because they’re attempting to do an excessive amount of and see too many individuals and work too quickly. It isn’t a sustainable situation.”
Kaiser said it has contingency plans to make sure patients proceed to receive care during a strike. All hospitals and emergency departments will remain open, in response to the corporate.
The strike by Kaiser Permanente employees is the most recent motion by organized labor this yr as inflation and a workforce shortage have brought tensions over pay, advantages and staffing to a boiling point.
Greater than 25,000 members of the United Auto Workers are currently on strike against Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis. Hollywood writers staged a 150-day walkout that got here to an end last week after they secured a pay increase and improved advantages.
Hospitals have long struggled to retain staff because workers are inclined to leave the low pay and the high stress of the health-care field when unemployment is low, in response to Patricia Pittman, an authority at the Milken Institute School of Public Health.
The devastating toll of the Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the staffing shortage, Pittman said. Many workers left the sphere because they felt hospital administrators was not doing enough to guard them from each the virus and antagonism from some members of the community, she said.
“The health-care workers lived through a period of tremendous fear and uncertainty about themselves, their families, and sometimes didn’t feel supported by the administration and sometimes didn’t feel supported by the community,” Pittman said.
Kaiser Permanente this week acknowledged the stress that health-care workers are facing.
Greater than 5 million people have left their health-care jobs and burnout is at a record high, the corporate said in a press release Monday. Kaiser said it’s committed to a good and equitable agreement.
However the union coalition said management didn’t adequately address workers’ concerns about unsafe staffing levels. The three-day strike is a protest against Kaiser executives’ “bad faith bargaining,” the coalition said in a press release Tuesday.
Kaiser reported a profit of $2 billion within the second quarter, compared with a year-earlier lack of $1.2 billion. The nonprofit generated $25 billion in revenue within the second quarter.