More than 75,000 nurses, pharmacists and other employees of the Kaiser Permanente health system walked off the job Wednesday in the largest U.S. healthcare strike in recent history.
The workers struck after contracts expired and their unions couldn’t reach an agreement with Kaiser on how much a new deal would increase wages and staffing.
To minimize the impact on patients, Kaiser said it would bring on temporary workers to fill some vacancies, but would, if needed, postpone some appointments and expand its network to retail pharmacies and, for some people, non-Kaiser hospitals.
“Our plans ensure that the urgent needs of our members and patients are the top priority,” Kaiser said.
The strike, which is scheduled to last as long as three days, adds hospitals, pharmacies and clinics to workplaces roiled by labor action this year, after auto workers and Hollywood writers stopped work.
Through August this year, the U.S. had lost more workdays to labor disputes than any full year since 2000.
Unions emboldened by public support and the tight labor market are flexing their power to demand higher pay. Workers have also seen how strikes by other unions have secured contract wins.
Kaiser, based in Oakland, Calif., is a well-known name in healthcare, pioneering the combination of a health insurer, hospitals and doctor’s offices under one roof in a bid to offer higher-quality care while controlling costs.
The system serves 12.7 million members at 40 hospitals and more than 620 medical offices, mostly on the West Coast but also in Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland and Virginia. Kaiser counts about 213,000 employees who aren’t physicians.
The work stoppage involves Kaiser workers in five states and Washington, D.C., including workers who care for patients, such as pharmacists and respiratory therapists, and other staffers, such as laboratory technicians and kitchen and janitorial employees.
Workers in Washington, D.C., and Virginia plan to strike for a day, a spokeswoman for the unions said. Strikes in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state will last three days.
The strike is the largest action by healthcare workers since 1993, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics first collected such data.
Kaiser unions said inflation has eroded employee wages, and staff shortages are burning out workers while compromising the quality of care.
Georgette Bradford, an ultrasound technologist at Kaiser Permanente in Sacramento, Calif., who is a member of the unions’ bargaining team, said short staffing in her unit has prompted some patients to leave without getting care.
Bradford said workers are demanding that Kaiser do more to boost hiring and keep workers, such as offering better raises. “The cost of living is not matching the current wages,” she said. “We’re losing people.”
Kaiser said its compensation leads its markets and the company has increased hiring. It has hired more than 9,800 people for jobs covered by unions, a spokeswoman said.
Like other health systems, Kaiser has faced a shortage of healthcare workers coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic but has added more than 50,000 employees to its payroll in the past two years and continues to hire, the spokeswoman said.
In the contract talks, Kaiser said, it has proposed wage increases of 12.5% to 16% in total over four years, depending on the location.
Unions said the employer’s offer doesn’t go far enough to offset inflation. They are seeking a total wage increase of 24.5%.
Kaiser’s finances this year rebounded from an industrywide drop seen in 2022 from the tight labor market and inflation. Kaiser reported net income of $3.3 billion on $50.4 billion in revenue during the first half of this year.