1/15/2024 0 Comments Kaiser permanente union strike![]() She derided the proposal to pay new workers less: “You can’t solve a nursing shortage that way.” She faulted Kaiser’s wage survey, saying it should have been done in cooperation with Kaiser’s unions. “Union and management have to know how to dance together and box at the same time.”ĭenise Duncan, president of the United Nurses union, called Kaiser’s offer “totally unacceptable”. “The idea that you’re going to have differences between labor and management partners that might result in a strike or a strike vote is part of the labor-management process,” he said. Lazes, who has studied Kaiser’s partnership, isn’t so sure that the labor dispute will jeopardize the partnership long-term. We sustained the hospitals and took care of the sick like it’s a war zone Semanu Mawugbe It seems hard to understand why they’re doing this when there’s a nursing shortage nationally.” They tell us we’re heroes and we’re much appreciated … But their offer shows they don’t mean it. “I have to blame management for not being sensitive. “It generally doesn’t make sense having two tiers of staff and it makes even less sense when we’re going through a pandemic.” said Peter Lazes, former director of the Health Care Transformation Project at Cornell University. Labor experts also said Kaiser’s two-tier proposal to pay new hires significantly less was bound to anger workers and worsen staffing problems. “It does seem like a provocation,” Dean Eaton said. ![]() Other unions felt shortchanged to be offered less than that. Kaiser offered just 1%-a-year raise while its largest union, a service employees’ local representing 46,000 Kaiser workers, has a contract that calls for raises of 3% a year over the next two years. Several labor experts said Kaiser made some elementary bargaining mistakes that were bound to inflame its workers. Under Kaiser’s revised proposal, new hires would be paid 15% less than current workers. Facing a strike, Kaiser management increased its contract offer to a 2% raise in each of four years with a 2% lump sum payment in the contract’s first two years. Peasnall said Kaiser’s wages have risen to the point where its union members earn “on average 26% above the market rate”. “The fact is wages and benefits account for half of Kaiser Permanente’s operational costs.” “The challenge we are trying to address in partnership with our unions is the increasingly unaffordable cost of healthcare,” Arlene Peasnall, Kaiser’s senior vice-president of human resources, said in a statement. On September 2, 2019, Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers, patients and their supporters marched in a Labor Day protest in Los Angeles, California against the healthcare giants unfair labor practices and shift from prioritizing patients to profits. Kaiser overall has $89bn in annual revenues, 12 million health plan members, 39 hospitals and more than 700 other medical facilities spread across eight states and Washington DC. The partnership includes over 100,000 union members. Since Kaiser’s labor-management partnership was founded in 1997, none of its 35 union locals has gone on strike. We’re the ones who sustained the hospitals and took care of the sick like it’s a war zone.” The unions say Kaiser is seeking to squeeze wages when the non-profit company is doing well, with $45bn in cash reserves and $6.8bn in operating profits the last three years. ![]() “But their offer shows they don’t mean it. “They tell us we’re heroes and we’re much appreciated because of everything we did during the pandemic”, he said. “It’s a slap in the face,” he said, noting that the 1%-a-year offer was well below this year’s 5%-plus inflation rate. It certainly caused a strong reaction in Semanu Mawugbe, a Kaiser nurse in Los Angeles. “If they’ve decided not to do that any more, it’s going to cause a strong reaction among the unions.” “The partnership has been built on it being a leading payer in the market,” said Adrienne Eaton, dean of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, who has written about Kaiser. Saying that its labor costs were far above its competitors, Kaiser initially proposed raises of 1% a year for three years and cutting the pay of new hires to 26% below those of its current employees. The nurses’ union – United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care – complained that management’s latest employment offer would “depress wages for current employees and slash wages for incoming workers”. Last week one of Kaiser’s nurses’ unions served notice it would strike on 15 November, and soon after, several other unions also voted to strike.
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