About 31,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses and other health care professionals plan to go on an indefinite strike starting Monday.
Their main complaints are chronic understaffing, increasing workloads and concerns that Kaiser’s salary and contract proposals do not address cost-of-living pressures.
The striking workers are primarily represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Professionals (UNAC/UHCP). Their strike will affect 20 hospitals and 200 clinics in California and Hawaii.
Kaiser said it plans for its facilities to remain open, but warns of disruptions, rescheduled appointments and possible pharmacy closures.
This week, the health system issued a statement saying national labor negotiations have stalled despite what it called significant progress and a “historic” wage proposal, blaming unions for bad faith tactics and disruptions in the bargaining process.
Kaiser said moving unresolved issues to local negotiations is the most practical way to reach agreements on wages and benefits.
Unions frame the strike as a patient safety and workforce retention crisis, not just a wage fight. They argue that low staffing levels and increasing administrative pressures are already delaying care, forcing doctors to cut services and, in some cases, leave the organization entirely.
One union member, Cameron Cook, a nurse anesthetist at Kaiser Hospital in Redwood City, California, said Kaiser has not bargained in good faith and has tried to portray union workers as greedy while avoiding serious negotiations.
He said doctors are not seeking big financial gains, but rather fighting to preserve existing benefits and protections that Kaiser is now trying to roll back, despite claims of generous pay increases.
“While Kaiser promotes the idea that they are offering a very generous pay increase, they are hiding the fact that they are actually trying to cut many of our benefits, retirement and health care, as well as our ability to control our own scheduling,” Cook stated.
He also noted that the dispute is an issue of patient care and highlighted how staffing shortages lead to delayed appointments, canceled surgeries and poor communication.
He has witnessed these problems as a provider and as a patient’s family member.
“I have a son who has a permanent disability, so we constantly go to Kaiser. I see what patients face in that regard, in terms of delayed or canceled appointments, and the inability to get an answer or talk to a human being. He recently had major surgery and we were never able to attend his three-month follow-up. In the end we had to stop trying because no one would contact us,” Cook said.
Ultimately, he believes employees still believe in Kaiser’s mission, but are concerned that the organization is drifting toward corporate priorities at the expense of patients and front-line staff.
He warned that if Kaiser continues on its current path, the gap between its stated values and the everyday realities for patients and doctors will only widen.
“We like Kaiser. We believe in Kaiser. I think in terms of health care in the U.S., the Kaiser model is admirable, but we’re starting to see corporate interests coming in and, frankly, losing their way. We want Kaiser to invest in patient care and the providers who provide that care,” Cook said.
This type of labor dispute is nothing new for Kaiser. This same group of 31,000 workers went on strike in October, when they did so for five days over concerns related to staffing, wages and patient care.
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