On Wednesday, an estimated 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers across five states and Washington DC walked out in the largest health care workers strike in US history. After several days of negotiations over fair labor practices and higher wages, company and union members failed to reach a compromise.
Both groups “are still at the bargaining table, having worked through the night in an effort to reach an agreement,” the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions said in a statement, noting there “has been a lot of progress.”
Last month, health care workers threatened to go on strike if Kaiser didn’t agree to increased pay and solutions to the ongoing staff shortage, among other demands, before the union contract’s expiration on Saturday. While the strike is set to last for three days, union members say that they’re prepared to extend it to November if necessary.
“This is a difficult decision, and we know it will require sacrifices of us all,” wrote the Coalition. “but Kaiser executives continue to bargain in bad faith over the solutions we urgently need to the Kaiser short staffing crisis and the safety and well being of our patients and workers is on the line.”
As my colleague, Ruth Murai reported, the hospitals have a contingency plan in place to ensure continued operation.
Hmmm, we have the most expensive health care in the world and yet we cannot afford to pay a decent wage to the workers who provide it? Perhaps a for-profit health care system that allows administrators and share holders to reap all the profits at the expense of patients and workers is a bad thing. No, it’s the
childrenhealth care workers who are wrong.We were hearing Kaiser providers complain of workloads at least 10 years ago. Sad to see nothing has changed. Not surprising in the least.
I can only hope that this actually does something.
Not to diminish your point but Kaiser is a non-profit.
Not saying that they deserve your sympathy because they don’t.
More saying that non-profit healthcare is killing people too.
Having worked for a non-profit hospital in the past,
I can assure you that the term “non-profit” in this context does not mean what you think it means.“Non-profit” hospitals go after profit every bit as aggressively as “for profit” hospitals, but depending on the legal structure are simply required to accept a certain number of non-paying patients (a requirement that is frequently overlooked and not enforced) and to roll the profits back into the enterprise, including massive C-suite salaries, instead of paying out dividends on shares.
EDITED because I misread the comment to which I was replying, oops
Oh you don’t need to tell me that. I’ve worked in a non-profit hospital as well.
It’s just as shitty and they use that “non-profit” spin to tell you that you should be okay with getting paid less…
FoR tHe PaTiEnTs
I misread your last sentence and replied to what I thought you said, lol. You could not be more right. Thanks for the correction.
I worked at a clinic that was “nonprofit” but couldn’t pay a living wage to anyone who wasn’t considered a big part of administration. iT director made 80k and the president of the company made 150k. The worst part is that everyone making bank had underlings doing their work for them. I know because I was one of those underlings
That’s… how the corporate structure works. “Nonprofit” is just a label for tax purposes
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I have KP as my health provider. A few weeks ago I had a really bad eye infection after doing some wood work. I went in to get it looked at, and they gave me an antibiotic ointment, but said there was a good chance I had developed an infection over and around a small piece of wood in my eye, and I needed to see an opthalmologist asap to get it removed. So they put in a high priority referral and I was told I should call and would be seen in one or two days.
I called when I got home, and the opthalmologist’s office said the earliest they could see me was in six weeks. I told them the other doctor said I likely had wood in my eye that would need to be removed, but that didn’t change their answer. So I went back to urgent care the next day and this new doctor removed it and gave me a second ointment to use.
Don’t get me started on their mental health services. I tried to do an intake and set up recurring appointments with a therapist. After they did the intake and accepted me for therapy, they said the earliest appointment was in six months, to be seen for one hour every six months. So I didn’t even bother.
I don’t hold any of the medical professionals at fault, there’s just not nearly enough of them to provide quality care or any semblance of continuity of care. KP’s statements about being fully in compliance with staffing requirements are absolutely Hollywood accounting. They’re not even close in reality.
Their CEO died at age 60 of CV causes
60
CEO of a healthcare organization
That golden parachute turns into a golden coffin I guess.
But conservatives told me wait times in healthcare only happen because of socialism. Did they lie to me?
Good.
I mean, not good. Especially for the poor people under their care who will suffer.
But god damn I like seeing labor take action after decades of eroding away its power and value.
I support you American health care workers.
Tax the rich and let the bounty flow down.
MJ says Kaiser has a plan to keep the lights on and facilities running, but doesn’t have any detail. Does anyone know how they’re planning on doing that?
Probably going to be travel nurses, med students, and moonlighting physicians who need to make ends meet - along with others
I was thinking the same, but that’s going to be ridiculously expensive. I can’t see how that would be a serious plan for an extended strike. I can’t imaging Kaiser could maintain that for very long in the face of a 6% raise ask.
They have to have run the numbers, but if travel nurses are anywhere near where they were a year ago, they’re going to blow the budget on just that. It’s one thing to get a half dozen or dozen temp people in at 3x base pay, but you can’t do that with an entire staff, plus the fact that they won’t have the facility-specific knowledge to properly carry out their duties in the larger context of the particular hospital.
I support the strike, but I’m just trying to imagine why Kaiser wouldn’t fold like umbrellas on this one because of the scale.
beats me. in the healthcare world kaiser is pretty polarizing. the effectiveness of having the entire healthcare system in one network has a lot of benefits (patient access, communication between physicians, billing) - but of course with that level of vertical power means that there’s ample room for greed to get in the way of prioritizing patient care and dignified treatment of their providers. So it’s possible they have a lot more money than we think, which means more time to try to demoralize the strikers.
It could be an emotional/ego factor as well… execs who feel too proud to fold.
what are your thoughts?
I really don’t know. I was surprised to read that statement from the Hollywood exec that said they were planning on starving out the writers, and thought that not only was he idiotically saying the quiet part out loud, but he was guaranteeing the strike would go on just because of the level odd moral offense.
I think where we go wrong is when we expect businesses to act as rational actors as if philosophical capitalism described real phenomena. For all I know, there is no spreadsheet saying that they’ll be bleeding $500M per month so fallback to negotiates a settlement if the strike lasts for more than five weeks. But that’s what I’d expect and want to see. I mean, I side with the strike, but also don’t want to think there’s some Elon fanboy calling the shots for Kaiser.
AI, of course!
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JFC, what timeline are we living in that that answer might be considered serious? Fuck.
As a nurse who’s currently working to bring a nursing union into our hospital, I love you guys. Thank you for the support.
