Healthcare workers say chronic under-staffing is driving a growing patient care crisis
LOS ANGELES, CA – A strike may be looming at one of the nation’s largest employers.
Healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente announced on Thursday that they’ll hold a strike authorization vote over the corporation’s unfair labor practices if a settlement isn’t reached by Saturday, August 26. Following the UPS labor settlement with the Teamsters, the labor negotiations covering 85,000 Kaiser healthcare workers – represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions – have now become the largest single-employer labor negotiations occurring in the United States.
At issue, healthcare workers say, are a series of unfair labor practices related to bargaining in bad faith, along with simmering staff concerns related to unsafe staffing levels that can lead to dangerously long wait times, mistaken diagnosis, and neglect. After years of the COVID pandemic and chronic understaffing, Kaiser healthcare workers are calling on management to provide safe staffing levels.