Up to 31,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in California and Hawaii went on indefinite strike on Monday in the latest work stoppage at the United States nation’s largest medical provider.
The registered nurses, nurse anaesthetists, pharmacists, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians and other specialty healthcare professionals are involved in the open-ended strike.
The workers previously held a five-day walkout with marches and picket lines in rainy weather in October.
The union that represents the striking Kaiser workers, called United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals and known as UNAC/UHCP, said it called a new strike because contract talks had stalled.
The union also launched an unfair labour practice charge filed with federal regulators, accused Kaiser of unlawfully undermining negotiations and attempting to intimidate workers by warning them about the consequences of striking and directing workers to report union activity to management.
The union’s president, Charmaine Morales, said that no date has been set for reopening bargaining bargaining, she stated: ‘The delay is disappointing. They need to return to the table, that’s the biggest thing.’
The coalition, called the Alliance of Health Care Unions, counts some 62,000 Kaiser workers 23 local unions among its members. UNAC/UHCP, which represents workers in California and Hawaii, is the alliance’s largest unit.
UNAC/UHCP said it has been pushing for increased salaries and solutions to staffing shortages in contract negotiations that have continued for more than seven months, but said Kaiser has scrapped discussions seeking to address employee burnout and safety. The union’s collective bargaining agreements with Kaiser Permanente expired Sept. 30.
The union has requested wage rises of 25 per cent over four years, stating that the wage boosts are necessary to compensate for the far smaller increases workers received in their 2021 contract negotiations, when they received a 2 per cent raise in the first year.
Picketer Bianka Tulgar, a paediatric physical therapist, said: ‘Staffing ratios are horrid.
‘The healthcare system has even failed to provide for basic, inexpensive toys in the budget, which are tools we need to work effectively with children. That’s a problem.’
Dianne Lipp said it was ‘very disheartening’ to think about the money Kaiser was spending on temporary workers, when it could spend those funds on its employees, whom she described as having ‘flagging wages still playing catch-up since Covid-19’.
Lipp, who has worked at Kaiser for two decades, said she is the sole full-time occupational therapist serving three different paediatric departments at the medical centre on Sunset Boulevard in LA, dealing with particularly severe and acute cases in intensive care units that are transferred in from other Kaiser medical centres across Southern California.
Lipp said: ‘I largely deal with premature babies born before term they need a gastronomy tube inserted, and assess motor skills to start bottle- or nipple-feeding, among other issues. I have had a lot of training for this job it can’t just be done by a temporary workers.
Early Monday morning, scores of green and navy blue signs bobbed rhythmically in the hands of picketing workers outside Kaiser‘s Los Angeles Medical Centre as a hired DJ played music and passing vehicles honked their horns.
The facility on Sunset Boulevard is among over 20 sites across the state where the union set up picket lines, with the vast majority in Southern California.
There are another 10 sites on strike in Hawaii.
Following the tragic events in Minneapolis, American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley issued the following statement: ‘Today, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an AFGE Local 3669 member and a nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Centre who dedicated his life to serving American veterans, was killed during protests in Minneapolis connected to the administration’s immigration actions.
‘Our union is heartbroken. An AFGE member is dead. And a family’s life has been forever changed.
‘While details of the incident are still emerging, one fact is already clear: this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum.
‘For months, this administration has pursued immigration actions designed to provoke confrontation rather than solve problems.
‘Their actions have raised tensions in communities across the country while stoking fear, chaos, and division.
‘Federal workers have been placed at the centre of this political theatre, turned into symbols instead of being treated as the public servants they are.
‘That kind of leadership failure has consequences, making everything more dangerous for the public and law enforcement alike.
‘Today, those consequences include the death of an AFGE member.
‘We are aware that video of the incident is circulating and that DHS has made public claims about what occurred that are brought into question by those videos. A full, transparent accounting and investigation is essential. But no after-the-fact explanation can erase the reality that this administration’s choices have created the conditions that made this tragedy possible.
‘Do not mistake restraint for acceptance. Accountability will come, and AFGE will not be silent about the policies and decisions that led us here.’
- Members of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) have said changes the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have made regarding access to working from home will ‘have adverse effects’ on employees.
The NTEU has urged members to petition senators: ‘Please vote yes for the Protect America’s Workforce Act!
‘As my Senator, I urge you stand up for federal employees and the services they provide the American people by speaking out against this administration’s all-out assault on the nonpartisan career civil service.
‘This administration’s actions to eliminate the bargaining rights of over a million federal workers is a major escalation on the assault on working people.
‘This is yet another example of how this administration continues to ignore the role of Congress and consolidate power in the executive branch.
- A group of Health and Human Services Department employees can proceed in their efforts to pursue a class action lawsuit over their sackings, a federal judge ruled last Thursday evening, defeating the Trump administration’s efforts to have the case thrown out.
Seven HHS workers brought their case in June, arguing the department botched their reductions in force in April and therefore violated the 1974 Privacy Act.
Last Thursday, US District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington said those individuals – who are seeking to represent all of the 10,000 HHS employees who were laid off last year – provided sufficient evidence to keep their case moving forward.
The Trump administration had sought to have the case dismissed, arguing the workers should instead take their case to an entity designed specifically for federal civil servants, such as the Merit Systems Protection Board, and that they could not prove HHS had acted with ‘intentional malice’.
Judge Howell said the administration can make that argument at a later stage, but was not appropriate during the ‘motion to dismiss’ considerations.
While the Supreme Court has previously greenlit President Trump’s efforts to carry out RIFs as he sees fit, that legal fight concerned constitutional and legislative questions over executive authority.
The HHS case takes a different approach, seeking pecuniary relief for errors during the department’s hasty efforts.
The HHS has been forced to overturn many of the 10,000 job cuts.
Most recently, it rescinded redundancy notices sent to around 400 employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
