More Than 31,000 Health Care Workers in California, Hawaii Continue To Strike

The union, United Nurses Associations of California / Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) stated in a press release this Monday, February 9, ​“More than 3,000 UFCW-represented pharmacy technicians, pharmacy assistants and clinical laboratory professionals — also members of the Alliance of Health Care Unions and all essential to safe patient care — are set to walk out in their own ULP strike today at Kaiser facilities throughout Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura and Kern counties.

“When pharmacies and laboratories are short staffed, patients feel the impact immediately: delayed medications, delayed test results and delayed clinical decisions — all of which can compromise care.

“UNAC/UHCP members are joining UFCW Locals 135, 324, 770, 1167, and 1428, and 1442, to send a clear and unified message: Kaiser must stop playing games with staffing and patient care and bargain in good faith for contracts that protect both patients and caregivers.

“The strike is legal, necessary, and focused on patient care. After more than eight months of bargaining, Kaiser continues to stall while frontline caregivers face daily understaffing, burnout, and delayed care for patients. Instead of engaging meaningfully, Kaiser is attempting to undermine a democratically authorized strike and distract from its own responsibility to ensure safe staffing and timely care.

“Kaiser’s claim that investing in caregivers is, quote, unsustainable does not hold up. It has the resources to fix these problems and chooses not to. Chronic understaffing is what truly drives up costs and harms patients.”

In response to the strike, Kaiser said in a statement that it released on January 25 that, ​“Kaiser Permanente has been bargaining with UNAC/UHCP and the Alliance of Health Care Unions for more than 7 months, the longest negotiations in national bargaining history, to reach agreement on a new set of national and local contracts.

“These negotiations come at a time when health care costs are rising and millions of Americans are at risk of losing access to health coverage. This underscores our responsibility to deliver fair, competitive pay for employees, while protecting access and affordability for our members. We are doing both.

“Despite the union’s claims, this strike is about wages. This open ended strike by UNAC/UHCP is unnecessary when such a generous offer is on the table. The strike is designed to disrupt the lives of our patients —the very people we are here to serve.”

Read the full Kaiser Permanente statement and the union press release. In today’s episode, we’re going to take you straight to the front lines of the struggle, so that you can hear directly from the folks at the center of it.

I’m joined on the podcast today by Sanayo Kondo, a physical therapist at Kaiser - Redwood City in Northern California, who is on the bargaining team; Kadi Gonzalez, an outpatient registered nurse at Kaiser who works in OB/​Gyn care and is on the board of directors for UNAC/UHCP; and Lucky Longoria, a registered nurse who works in pediatrics at Kaiser Downey and previously worked as a travel nurse.

Thank you for joining us on the show today. I wanted to start with a quick round table and ask you to introduce yourselves, tell our audience about the work that you do and why you are on strike.

Sanayo Kondo: My name is Sanayo Kondo. I’m a physical therapist at Kaiser — Redwood City in Northern California. I work with patients and help them recover from various illnesses and injuries, surgeries, strokes, brain tumors, etc. I’m on strike primarily because of staffing and burnout. It’s gotten more and more difficult for therapists to be able to see their patients and help them in their recovery journey.

I’ve been a therapist at Kaiser for 18 years, and I’ve really seen the care model change quite a bit over the years. You used to be able to get in to see your provider relatively quickly and get back for a return appointment relatively quickly. But now patients are having to wait weeks to months to get in to see their therapist because Kaiser measures itself on how quickly they can get the first appointment in. It’s not good for the patients.

On the provider side, they got into this profession to help patients. And when they have to look at their patient and say, ​‘I’m sorry, I don’t have another appointment to see you for another six weeks.’ That is really difficult and causes moral injury for the therapist themselves. Being told by their managers, ​‘Well just tell them they don’t need to be seen for another six weeks and that that’s what they need.’ It causes a lot of distress. We’re seeing therapists leave, or sit in their car and cry before going into work because they don’t want to have to have those conversations with their patients.

Kadi Gonzalez: I’m Kadi Gonzalez. I’m on the board of directors for UNAC/UHCP. I represent 40,000 plus of our members proudly. I’ve been a registered nurse for 27 years. Eleven of those years are at Kaiser, and it’s not the same employer. I work in outpatient, so there is a huge problem with access. I work in OB/​Gyn, and we get patients calling us every single day wanting to get in to see a provider.

I’m fighting, and it’s not just about the access. We’re fighting for more staff. Kaiser has the resources. They have close to 70 billion in reserves, and we’re asking to hire more nurse practitioners, more physicians assistants, more midwives. The second reason why I’m out there is because Kaiser is not saying that they want to take away pensions. And they wanted to decrease rates for Northern California brothers and sisters that joined our union two years ago. These are people that have worked for Kaiser for many years, but they joined our union.

Lucky Longoria: Hi. My name is Lucky Longoria. I am a pediatric nurse at Kaiser and Downey. I’m inpatient. I have been a nurse for about 15 years. Seven of those years I spent as a travel nurse. I got to see an array of different hospitals. I dreamed so hard of landing at Downey, of being there for the rest of my career of making that my permanent job. And then I got here, and within a year of me getting hired, we were in a battle for our careers. I wasn’t expecting to land and hit the ground running, preparing for the fight that this is. Kaiser’s pushing that this is all about the wages, and that couldn’t be further from the truth because I can survive with less money. I cannot survive if a mistake is made because staffing is not appropriate to the level of care our patients needs.

Alvarez: This is one of the most common kind of discussions that we have on this podcast across industries: over burdened, understaffed, underpaid workers, and bosses who all had the same idea to just pile more work onto fewer workers and expect that nothing’s gonna break. It decreases the quality of life for the people doing the work. It decreases the quality of service of the people paying for those services, yet it is increasing the profits of the people at the top.

Can we have y’all break down in detail where this strike came from? Talk a bit more about the key issues that you’ve been facing as Kaiser health care workers, how you and your union have been trying to address those at the bargaining table, and what Kaiser’s response has been.

Kondo: When we tried to address workload and staffing at the bargaining table with our management team one of the issues that came up was appointment length. Another piece that we were fighting hard for was just language that gives us the ability to use the PTO that we have earned.

Gonzalez: I’ve observed at both local and national bargaining the complete disrespect by this employer. We spend hours waiting. Then the employer, if they show up, it’s very brief, and they won’t give any proposals. Our union used every single lever before we actually did an indefinite strike. We don’t want to disrupt patient care. We want to be there taking care of our patients. We actually did a short strike in October, a five-day strike. But when your employer is ghosting you for five to six weeks, and then we’re on strike on day 17. And finally, they’re at the table for all 15 books. But you know what it took? It took UFCW to join us for three days to really shut it down. 

Longoria: I’m impatient, and what I’ve seen is the lack of access to a seat at the table. We’re supposed to be partners, but we’re not. When your nurses and your health care providers are outside the building, something is wrong. We’re supposed to be with our patients, taking care of them, because our oath is first to do no harm. So if we’ve stepped away from our role, it’s because staying in the hospital and not saying a word that does more harm.

Alvarez: I want to thank our guests Sanayo Kondo, Kadi Gonzalez and Lucky Longoria, all union members with UNAC/UHCP and all currently on strike at Kaiser Permanente. And of course, Thank you all for listening and for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network, where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for The Real News newsletter so you never miss a story. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Solidarity forever.