Kaiser faces potentially crippling strike as unions representing about 100,000 plan walkouts
One union after another at Kaiser Permanente will vent some anger over the company’s stalled labor negotiations with nurses, pharmacists and other front-line health care workers, setting one-day sympathy strikes for next week.
They are walking out in support of roughly 35,000 unionized Kaiser workers who plan to kick off an open-ended strike Monday and 700 biomedical and structural engineers who have been on the picket line since Sept. 18.
Labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner said the sympathy strikes are a big deal: “It’s very revealing that all these workers — 20,000 30,000, however many it is — are willing to go on strike in solidarity with other workers. In the rest of the world, this happens all the time, but that is not something that happens in the US.”
Over the course of this week, the number of sympathy strikes at Kaiser has grown, and as of Thursday, unions representing roughly 64,000 workers had pledged to picket for a day. Their entry into this labor standoff means that Kaiser members in Northern California also will feel the impact of a strike that otherwise would have been centered in Southern California.
Arlene Peasnall, senior vice president of human resources at Kaiser Permanente, said the company’s history is deeply connected to organized labor but that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has strained relationships.
“The challenge we are trying to address in partnership with our unions is the increasingly unaffordable cost of health care,” Peasnall said. “And the fact is wages and benefits account for half of Kaiser Permanente’s operational costs. We are asking our labor unions to work with us to address this very real problem, just as we have done with other challenges over the course of our relationship.”
One key sticking point in the bargaining has been a management proposal to create a two-tier wage structure that would either pay lower wages to new hires or adjust wages depending on the market where an employee works. Kaiser said it has always negotiated wages at a national level, and that has meant that Kaiser workers in certain markets earn a considerable premium over other health-care workers in their regions.
“Over time in many areas, our wage rates have grown to the point where our union-represented employees earn about 26% above the average market wage,” Peasnall said, “and in some places it’s 38% above market. These numbers don’t include the value of our industry-leading benefits and retirement and pension plans along with the opportunity to earn an additional bonus every year, based on our performance.”
Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said Kaiser will face stiff opposition to two-tier wages from members of labor unions. These organizations have a duty of equal and fair representation for all members, she said, and a two-tier wage structure violates that duty.
In addition, she said, decades of research have shown that such wage differences cripple the morale of workers and lead to high turnover and lower productivity.
“Companies and the government ... think, ‘Ah, this is a way we’ll break the unions or weaken the union because we’ll pit one group of workers against the other,’ or ‘This is how we’ll cut costs,’” Bronfenbrenner said. “But they’ve ended up discovering that it’s so bad for morale and it’s so bad for productivity, because it creates very high turnover. ... People just get angry. One set of workers doesn’t want to work next to the other.“
Georgette Bradford works as an ultrasound technologist at Kaiser’s Point West medical offices in Sacramento and sits on the executive committee for the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.
Any plan to pay workers according to the market where they work does not take into account that many Kaiser workers live in different markets than the ones where they work. For instance, she said, she worked in Modesto but lived in Sacramento when she was hired at Kaiser.
The two-tier wage structure is a way to drive a wedge between members, she said, adding that Kaiser certainly can afford to increases the wages of front-line workers.
The nonprofit company posted more than $1 billion in income from its operations, she said, but management wants to deny workers raises that are commensurate with their service. The organization’s top executives reap the rewards, she said, and then tell the public that she and other employees are overpaid.
“We were the ones that kept Kaiser working. We were the ones that kept Kaiser profitable,” she said, “but it’s the executives who are benefiting, the executives who are pulling in these high salaries. Yet we are overpaid?”
Bradford described such portrayals as demeaning, disrespectful and offensive.
“We are paid at the rate that is commensurate with the quality of care that we give,” she said, “and we are paid at a rate that is commensurate with the fact that we are a union and we are a union-protected shop.”
Bronfenbrenner noted that unionized workers feel that the generation before them looked out for them, ensuring that they could have a better standard of living. No one wants to be the generation that allowed those following them to receive lower wages, she said.
Roughly 700 biomedical and structural engineers have been on strike for nearly two months over this proposal and other issues. These are the folks who operate and maintain Kaiser’s buildings and medical equipment, including electrical distribution, fire life safety systems, X-ray machines, intravenous pumps and MRI machinery.
Roughly 35,000 others, all part of Kaiser’s Alliance of Health Care Unions, are scheduled to join them on the picket line starting Monday:
▪ 2,500 pharmacy workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers.
▪ 21,000 nurses represented by United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals.
▪ 7,400 licensed vocational nurses, pharmacy assistants, housekeepers and others represented by United Steelworkers Local 7600.
▪ 4,000 physician assistants, nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, registered nurses and others with the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Healthcare Professionals.
While the majority of these Kaiser employees work in Southern California or Oregon, the Sacramento region and other areas of Northern California will feel the effects because of planned one-day walkouts by other unions.
Bronfenbrenner said such labor actions are intended to put pressure on the employer because it is virtually impossible to call up enough contingency workers to replace full-time employees for just a 24-hour period.
“Patients are not going to be able to be treated,” she said. “There are going to be a lot of angry, frustrated customers. That’s going to cost the hospital a lot of money. And that’s going to be a big cost for Kaiser. They’re going to have to reschedule things.”
Here are the sympathy strikes planned so far in the Sacramento region:
Nov. 18: Roughly 40,000 members of three unions will hit the picket line. They include optometrists, clinical laboratory scientists, X-ray technicians, housekeepers and other front-line workers in the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29, and the Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20.
Nov. 19: About 22,000 registered nurses in the California Nurses Association and nearly 2,000 mental health clinicians in the National Union of Healthcare Workers will join their striking coworkers.
CNA President Cathy Kennedy, a registered nurse at the Kaiser Roseville Medical Center, said: “An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us, so nurses will be standing in solidarity with our engineer colleagues. ... It’s so important for working people to stand together.”
As The Bee reported earlier this week, Kaiser’s labor drama unfolds as workers in many industries press their advantage amid a tight labor market.
“We have prepared thoroughly to care for our patients in the event of a strike, but there will be some impact, which we are working to minimize,” Peasnall said
She noted that Kaiser leaders believe that continued discussion at the bargaining table is the best way to resolve issues and differences and that Kaiser would communicate with its patients through its website, kp.org.
“We take seriously any threat to disrupt care, especially as we continue to battle this pandemic,” she said. “Our proposals simply aim to slow the significant over-market growth in compensation while continuing to reward our employees and fulfill our commitment to our members and patients to provide high-quality, affordable health care.”
