Here’s the issue keeping Kaiser Permanente from averting a 75,000-plus worker strike

Picketing workers filled the air around Kaiser Permanente’s three Sacramento-area hospitals with chants, drumming and the high-pitched squeals of whistles as the largest health care strike in the nation’s history kicked off Wednesday.

Union and management negotiators bargained through the night and into the day Wednesday to try and resolve the one remaining issue dividing them.

That sticking point is pay, said company executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames in an interview Tuesday with The Sacramento Bee.

The impact of the strike is expected to be so widespread that leaders of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions told The Bee this summer that President Joe Biden’s labor advisers were monitoring progress. Labor experts have said the nation’s health care industry has never seen a job action of this magnitude.

The coalition, which represents 40% of Kaiser’s employees, has said the strike will continue through 6 a.m. Saturday. Union officials have said that low pay and under-staffing have resulted in difficult working conditions.

On the picket line at Kaiser’s Roseville Medical Center, teleservice representative Kristy Roscher said that patients are waiting 48 to 72 hours to find out whether they can get appointments.

“We have a short-staffing crisis,” she said. “We can’t call over to the (doctor) offices to get somebody on the line because they are so short-staffed. They’re helping multiple members getting checked into ... the rooms for them to be seen by the doctors.”

Gaskill-Hames, Kaiser’s regional president for Southern California and Hawaii, said that management’s bargaining team continues to try to understand the coalition negotiators’ perspectives and look for points of agreement.

“We have made a commitment in our philosophy for wages to be above the market, and ... in all of our markets, period, we are above the market in our pay scale,” she said. “In our negotiations, we’ve put forth deals that we think are fair. The current offer that we’ve put on the table are increases from 12.5% to 16% over the term of the contract, and that will continue to position us above the market. Our labor partners are asking us to go exponentially higher than that.”

One of those labor partners is the 58,000-member Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare West, the union that has waged a years-long campaign for a $25 minimum wage for health care workers in California, first through municipal initiatives and then through the legislative process.

The union’s effort culminated with Senate Bill 525, which now sits on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. It would require health care organizations with 10,000 full-time equivalent workers or more to pay a minimum wage of $23 an hour in June 2024, $24 in June 2025, and $25 in June 2026.

That wage floor would apply to direct patient care providers, such as nurses, physicians and medical residents, but also to workers in support positions, such as janitors, housekeepers, food service workers, medical billing personnel and gift shop clerks.

Battle over wages has been a long one for SEIU-UHW

SEIU-UHW, however, wanted $25 an hour back in 2022 and broader applicability of that wage, saying in its messages to workers: “Setting a health care worker minimum wage is a big step towards fixing the staffing shortages, burnout and overwork that we are all facing.

“Our employers refuse to take serious action to fully staff our facilities and are always looking to cut wages and benefits,” the union continued. “The minimum wage helps us fight back.”

The local union now is bargaining its first major contract since it launched that campaign, and members are digging in at Kaiser. At a July rally in Sacramento, they said that their Kaiser wages are so low that the company is competing against fast-food restaurants and retailers for workers.

Kaiser struggled with staffing levels even before the COVID-19 pandemic, said ultrasound technologist Georgette Bradford, who works in Kaiser medical offices near Cal Expo. She said the company didn’t aggressively move to fill positions that opened due to retirement or from pandemic burnout.

“We have wait times that are too long just to get appointments,” she said. “We have patients waiting too long, once they get appointments, to be seen once they’re in the facility. “(There are) delays getting medication. The effects go on and on.”

Kaiser exec says affordability is key consideration

Gaskill-Hames said that the company must consider how increases in labor costs will affect what it charges patients.

“We are focused on trying to balance employees and their needs, ensuring their needs are met and ensuring they have good wages,” Gaskill-Hames said. “We’re trying to keep health care affordable, and the ask at the table from our labor partners right now, they don’t leave room to accommodate that.”

Union members, however, have said that Kaiser’s operating profits show that the company is collecting money that could go toward their raises.

Kaiser reported $3 billion in profit in the first six months of this year, according to the company’s financial report.

“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,” SEIU-UHW leaders said in a statement issued Wednesday. “Kaiser’s CEO was compensated more than $16 million in 2021, and 49 executives at Kaiser are compensated more than $1 million annually.”

The union also pointed to outside investments totaling $113 billion.

Gaskill-Hames said: “Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plans are not for profit, so the profit that we make goes into investing in high-quality care and innovation, into new facilities and new technologies, to take care of our members.”

Kaiser officials said they had proposed across-the-board wage increases; a $23 minimum wage starting in 2024 in California; and a $21 minimum wage in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia starting in 2024.

Leaders of the health care giant also noted that Kaiser’s attrition rate of 7% is about a third of the industry average and that it continues to fall, stressing that these achievements are possible because job applicants consider Kaiser to be a leading health care employer.

If the strike proceeds at 6 a.m. Wednesday as scheduled, it is expected to affect virtually every aspect of the company’s patient care services until it ends Saturday morning.

Coalition members work in many fields, including as clinical laboratory scientists, medical laboratory technicians, optometrists, medical assistants, medical social workers, phlebotomists, information technology workers, licensed vocational nurses, physical therapy assistants and some registered nurses. Their contract expired Saturday.

In preparation for a strike, Gaskill-Hames said, medical staff asked some patients to come in earlier for appointments, but the company has hired contingency staff to help ensure that patients can get the care they need.