Health care workers at Sacramento Kaiser Permanente locations joined a nationwide walkout against the health care giant Wednesday, leaving pharmacies and some outpatient offices in the region closed for several days.
A coalition of unions representing 75,000 Kaiser lab and surgery technicians, phlebotomists, certified nursing assistants, housekeepers and other workers are protesting “unsafe staffing levels” at Kaiser facilities. It’s believed to be the largest health care strike in U.S. history.
The health care nonprofit said its hospitals and emergency rooms will remain open during the strike. But pharmacies, labs, and some outpatient clinics including OB-GYN and radiology clinics will close through Friday.
The Kaiser website lists how facilities in Sacramento, Roseville, Folsom and Davis as well as South Sacramento and Elk Grove will be affected by the strike.
“Kaiser needs to take care of the people who take care of people,” said Lanette Griffin, a lab technician of 30 years who works at Kaiser’s South Sacramento hospital. “We’re doing the job of two or three people right now.”
She and other workers said the staffing levels means patients can wait two hours or more for a routine blood draw, and that processing the results can take even longer when staffing levels are low.
“Our patients deserve better. Our communities deserve better. Our members deserve better,” Griffin said.
Most workers picketing outside the South Sacramento hospital Wednesday morning said understaffing is the biggest concern, but medical records specialist Terri McDonald called for higher pay to meet the rising cost of living.
“I’ve been with Kaiser for 25 years and when I started it was nothing like this. We have people that work for Kaiser that are homeless, living in their cars,” she said. “The people that sit up at the top are making all the money but they don’t want to pay us what we’re worth.”
“We didn’t want to be out here,” McDonald said. “We got to put our foot down and let Kaiser know we’re worth every penny that we’re asking for.”
Workers, largely represented by unions under the SEIU umbrella, expect to strike for three days, until Saturday morning.
“This three-day strike will be the initial demonstration of our strength to Kaiser that we will not stand for their unfair labor practices,” the coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions wrote in a September 22 statement. “If Kaiser continues to commit unfair labor practices, we are prepared to engage in another longer, stronger strike in November.”
Kaiser Permanente has said it has “contingency plans in place to ensure members continue to receive safe, high-quality care for the duration of the strike.” A notice on Kaiser’s website said some non-urgent appointments would be rescheduled and that affected patients would be contacted.
The organization said it has hired tens of thousands of workers since 2022 to fill empty positions and is on track to hire 10,000 union jobs in California. Kaiser has blamed a nationwide shortage of health care workers due to turnover and burnout following the COVID-19 pandemic.
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