Unions have been locked in a contentious debate with the nonprofit private health-care giant over wages, outsourcing and staffing shortages for six months. Kaiser officials maintain that health-care providers across the country have struggled to attract and retain workers in recent years — even as the pandemic receded.
Citing “a lot of progress,” Kaiser said in a statement Wednesday that both parties continued to meet until late Tuesday to reach a solution after contracts for unionized workers expired Sept. 30. Kaiser also pledged that hospitals and emergency departments would remain open during the strike, as dozens of clinics and other pharmacies temporarily close.
In Virginia, about 75 Kaiser pharmacists and optometrists, some wearing lab coats and scrubs, marched back and forth in front of Springfield Medical Center on Wednesday morning, chanting: “Hey Kaiser, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side.”
Passing drivers honked their car horns in support. David Hawa, 58, an ambulatory care pharmacist at the Springfield center for 28 years, said he reported to work every day during the pandemic when the area was a ghost town to fill prescriptions even as his co-workers got sick or left the profession.
“It just become impossible to keep up,” he said, of the constant flow of prescriptions flooding in electronically. “You have less people to do the daily work and less people to do patient interaction.” The center handles up to 1,000 prescriptions a day, Hawa said.
With inflation, Hawa has also seen co-workers commuting long distances after being priced out of the area. This has eroded the work-life balance that Kaiser has prided itself on providing workers — echoing concerns from other participants in the labor action.
Kaiser Permanente serves about 12.7 million customers — including 835,000 D.C. Washington-area members and operates 39 hospitals and 622 medical offices, according to its website. Its customers in the District, Maryland and Virginia receive care at outpatient clinics that provide coordinated primary care, pharmacy, lab, imaging and other ancillary services.
The strike at Kaiser arrives during a year of heightened labor activity in the United States. More than 445,000 workers have walked off the job this year so far, making it one of the biggest years for strikes since 2000, according to Bloomberg Law’s database of work stoppages. In Hollywood, 160,000 actors have been on strike since July, demanding higher wages and guardrails against the use of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, some 25,000 autoworkers are on strike for the first time against all Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
Powered by a tight labor market and the surging popularity of unions, recent strikes — and even strike threats — have led to big concessions from major U.S. employers at the bargaining table this year.
Last week, negotiators for the screenwriters’ guild reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios to end a nearly five-month strike. The union called the deal “exceptional” and said it included “meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.” In July, under the threat of a massive work stoppage, 340,000 UPS workers won their strongest contract in decades, which secured 48 percent raises for part-time workers over five years.
Health-care workers have also levied their share of work stoppages this year. Spanning New York to Texas to California, these strikes have largely centered on frustrations that nurses and other health-care professionals are being asked to care for too many patients as staffing levels have dwindled. Raising wages amid high inflation has also been a top priority. In the health-care industry, where strikes can disrupt critical services, many work stoppages are not open-ended as is common in other sectors, lasting only a few days.
“The reason you are seeing so many strikes is you are seeing so many workers strike and win. The copycat effect is so strong precisely because strikes work,” said Eric Blanc, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “Workers across the U.S. economy have been turning to strike action because they’ve been put into a squeeze by economic circumstance at the same time they have more wind in their sails to fight back.”
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents 85,000 Kaiser health-care workers — including about 3,800 employees in the District, Maryland and Virginia — is negotiating the first contract since before the coronavirus pandemic, which workers say worsened working conditions and exacerbated already dire staffing needs. The union has argued that Kaiser needs to offer higher wages and make other investments in staffing to attract employees and reduce patient wait times.
Kaiser officials say their employees earn comparatively higher wages and benefits and received nearly $1 billion in special benefits during the pandemic.
Paula Coleman, a clinical lab assistant who oversees blood and urine testing for Kaiser on strike in Englewood, Colo., said since the start of covid, she has seen many of her colleagues quit for less stressful and more lucrative jobs, while those who remain see their workloads increase as their wages lose purchasing power with the rising cost of living.
Some of her colleagues have started working second jobs to make ends meet; others can only afford to live hours away near the Kansas border. With her husband out of work, Coleman, who makes around $28 an hour, is in the process of applying for a second job at Pizza Hut to keep her household afloat.
“I can’t pay everything I need to pay on what I’m making,” Coleman said, while her husband is out of a job.
Kaiser told Colorado patients in a Wednesday morning notice that it might see higher call volumes because of the strike, possibly resulting in longer wait times. It listed more than 20 of its labs, imaging centers and pharmacies that will close down during the strike, mostly in the Denver and Boulder areas. The company also said it will bring in “licensed and qualified contract staff” in some cases to augment the workforce.
Some Kaiser customers facing disruptions vowed not to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking workers.
Roxanne Hawn, 55, a writer who lives near Golden, Co., said she pushed back her husband’s appointment by months because of the strike. It had been scheduled for Wednesday morning at a Kaiser facility an hour from their home, and she says she didn’t want to go through the trouble if there’s any chance it would be cancelled.
Hawn says she has been impressed by the level of coordinated care Kaiser provided to her sister, a two-time cancer survivor. But she says she comes from a union family and can’t bring herself to cross any picket line, even as a patient seeking care.
“We’re lucky in that our appointments are not dire … if it were [chemotherapy] I might have different feelings,” Hawn said.
In negotiations, the coalition has requested a $25 an hour minimum wage across the health-care giant, as well as annual pay increases of 7 percent for the first two years of the contract and 6.25 percent for the latter two years.
In its latest offer, Kaiser has said it would raise minimum starting pay to between $21 and $23 an hour, with annual raises of between 3 and 4 percent. The coalition of unions said starting pay varies by position and region, but many Kaiser employees currently earn less than $20 an hour.
Niesha Etkins, 32, and her wife Oluwatosin Etkins, 30, pharmacists at Capitol Hill and Northwest D.C. Kaiser locations, brought their 2-year-old daughter, Raya, to the picket line in Virginia dressed in a tiny white lab coat.
Oluwatosin, who is four months pregnant, said staff shortages mean more stress and taking on longer hours, sometimes working alone, while patients wait longer and have their calls go unanswered.
“It impacts employee health, physical, mental, but then it also impacts patient care,” she said. “You can’t give the best care to members when you yourself are struggling just to hold on.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
