Largest single-employer union negotiation in the U.S. inches closer to strike over unfair labor practices

Healthcare workers say Kaiser’s refusal to acknowledge under-staffing, decline in patient care is driving a growing crisis 

OAKLAND, CA – 2,500 Bay Area healthcare workers who are part of OPEIU Local 29 announced on Wednesday that they have voted to authorize a strike to protest unfair labor practices by a margin of 94% if no agreement is reached by September 30. Simultaneously,  4,500 healthcare workers belonging to OPEIU Local 30 in San Diego have also announced their authorization of a strike, underscoring the widespread concerns of short staffing and unfair labor practices with an equally commanding margin of 99% should negotiations remain unresolved by the same September 30th deadline.

This comes on the heels of nearly 70,000 SEIU and OPEIU members in Colorado, California, Oregon, Southwest Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland voting to authorize a strike at Kaiser Permanente in the past two weeks. These two decisive votes of OPEIU Local 29 and OPEIU Local 30 are the last to be completed before the coalition enters the final scheduled negotiations with Kaiser, concluding this Friday, September 22. 

This could be the largest healthcare strike in U.S. history, as workers say Kaiser executives refuse to acknowledge the decline in patient service and care and negate the struggle of the workforce to keep up with the high cost of living in areas where Kaiser operates.

“Kaiser patients deserve better than the care we’re able to give them because of short staffing – and that is heartbreaking to say as a healthcare worker,” said Ebony Hughes, Operator Services at Fremont Medical Center. “We have voted to authorize a strike because not only is Kaiser refusing to negotiate in good faith with frontline caregivers, but they’re ignoring the alarming patient care crisis at their facilities.”

Healthcare workers have been leaving the industry in droves with devastating consequences for patients. Caregivers say the day-to-day reality for many Kaiser patients is long wait times for appointments, and delays in receiving X-rays, prescriptions, phone responses, and other vital patient services. 

Healthcare workers say Kaiser is proposing to make the staffing crisis worse, not better, with their proposals in negotiations including:

• Slashing performance bonuses for frontline workers while paying top dollar to managers and executives who do not directly interact with patients.  This will demoralize frontline caregivers by sending a clear message that they are not a priority for Kaiser. 
• Removing protections against subcontracting and outsourcing jobs to low-wage, for-profit companies, creating less stability in the workforce. 
• Offering starting pay for certain entry-level positions that is not even competitive with fast food and retail chains in the high cost urban centers Kaiser operates in.  
• Continuing the ongoing trend from the past two years where wages have failed to keep up with the rising cost of living.
• Refusing to make serious commitments to develop the existing workforce to perform desperately needed hard-to-fill jobs and to train and recruit the volume of new staff needed to meet the projected workforce shortfall.  

“Kaiser used to be an industry leader, but now they’re failing to work together with frontline healthcare workers to solve a growing staffing crisis. And we’re all paying for it – our patients, their families, and the workers who provide their care,” said Tamara R. Rubyn, President of OPEIU Local 29. “Kaiser can and must do better. That is why today we have joined tens of thousands of our fellow Kaiser healthcare workers in voting to authorize a strike over unfair labor practices.”

The OPEIU Local 29 workers are among 85,000 Kaiser workers expected to vote to authorize the strike over unfair labor practices as part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Following the UPS labor settlement with the Teamsters, the labor negotiations covering 85,000 Kaiser healthcare workers have now become the largest single-employer labor negotiations occurring in the U.S. 

At issue, healthcare workers say, are a series of unfair labor practices related to bargaining in bad faith, along with simmering staff concerns related to unsafe staffing levels that can lead to dangerously long wait times, mistaken diagnosis, and rushed in-person care. After years of the COVID pandemic and chronic understaffing, Kaiser healthcare workers are calling on management to provide safe staffing levels.

The Kaiser healthcare workers are members of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers in seven states and the District of Columbia. In April, the Coalition began its national bargaining process ahead of their September 30th contract expiration. The Coalition and Kaiser Permanente last negotiated a contract in 2019, before healthcare workers found themselves on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic that has worsened working conditions and exacerbated a healthcare staffing crisis.

Tensions have been rising as the workers’ contract expiration looms. In July, tens of thousands of healthcare workers picketed Kaiser hospitals across the U.S. to protest the company’s growing care crisis. 

Workers say that Kaiser is committing unfair labor practices and also that under-staffing is boosting Kaiser’s profits but hurting patients. In a recent survey of 33,000 employees, 2/3 of workers said they’d seen care delayed or denied due to short staffing. 

Even as some frontline healthcare heroes live in their cars and patients wait longer for care, Kaiser released new financials this month indicating they made ​​$3 billion in profit in just the first six months of this year. 

Despite being a non-profit organization – which means it pays no income taxes on its earnings and extremely limited property taxes – Kaiser has reported more than $24 billion in profit over the last five years. Kaiser’s CEO was compensated more than $16 million in 2021, and 49 executives at Kaiser are compensated more than $1 million annually. Kaiser Permanente has investments of $113 billion in the U.S. and abroad, including in fossil fuels, casinos, for-profit prisons, alcohol companies, military weapons, and more.

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OPEIU 29 represents 2,400 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente, including lab assistants, pharmacy technicians, admitting representatives, receptionists, call center workers, claims examiners, coders, administrative support, operators, and various other back office support, and as well as those who operate the pharmacy distribution center in Livermore. Local 29 is a part of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which has more than 100,000 members in the United States.