Orchestrating what might be the largest health care strike in U.S. history, Kaiser Permanente workers have set forth a nationwide unfair labor practice strike, in conjunction with sympathy strikes, from Oct. 4 through Oct 7.
More than 75,000 Kaiser health care workers are protesting in various states including California, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Through national campaigns, workers voice extreme discontent in reportedly “bad faith bargaining over solutions to end the Kaiser short-staffing crisis”.
While greater impacts of the strike will be apparent West of the country, here in Northern Virginia, and D.C., Kaiser workers are demanding a pay rate of $25 minimum wage across the board, with a roughly 6.5% pay raise over the next two years, along with increased staffing.
According to surveys conducted by Statista, over two-thirds of surveyed registered nurses reported feelings of burnout on most of their workdays throughout 2023. Furthermore, when asked about the frequency of experiencing burnout on most days, 37% of surveyed registered nurses responded that they strongly agreed, while 31 percent somewhat agreed.
Overworked employees including Brittanye Cole, a licensed vocational nurse at California-based Kaiser LAMC, lamented her disappointment in the inability to provide timely care to a wounded 80-year-old patient due to short staffing and a lack of beds.
“It delayed the doctors seeing and getting her upstairs. Because of that, she ended up staying in the hospital longer as opposed to if we could have gotten her in faster than the eight hours.”
While fighting tears, Cole continued, “I felt bad about that because she’s an older patient. Her family had to call from New Jersey and nobody could talk to her son. She’s an older lady, she’s 80, and she was by herself.”
“If we had the staffing that we need,” Cole continued, “[her family] would be able to know how [their mother is doing.”
Understaffing isn’t the only issue hampering Kaiser employees, while the country faces rising inflation rates, employees outside of the D.C. Metropolitan areas struggle with stunted pay rates, threatening their ability to maintain stable living in their homes and even jobs within Kaiser hospitals to seek higher wages elsewhere.
“I work that 16-hour shift, I work that 20-hour shift, I do anything necessary to make sure that everything is done. One, because I care, it’s bigger than me. But two, I need to. I have no other option right now so I just say ‘yes’ to everything,” shared Tashe’ Tibbs, an employee from Washington State. “The truth is, it’s unhealthy for me. I don’t have a balance between work. I’m so tired that I fall asleep in the Kaiser parking lot, and at the end of the day that’s so unhealthy, but I keep fighting.”
The massive strike uplifts the voices of Kaiser workers as they ask for greater support to increase the staffing levels to where they need to be.
“Kaiser executives refuse to acknowledge how much patient care has deteriorated or how much the frontline health care workforce and patients are suffering because of the Kaiser short-staffing crisis,” Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West said in a statement detailing the Kaiser strike.
“The patient care crisis cannot be solved unless Kaiser executives follow the law by bargaining with health care workers in good faith, and take dramatic action now to solve the crisis by investing in its workforce.”
