Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in California and Hawaii walked off the job early Monday in the latest work stoppage to roil the nation’s largest not-for-profit medical provider.
Up to 31,000 registered nurses, nurse anesthetists, pharmacists, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians and other specialty healthcare professionals are involved in the open-ended strike.
The workers previously held a five-day walkout, with marches and picket lines in rainy weather, in October.
The union that represents the striking Kaiser workers, called United Nurses Assns. of California/Union of Health Care Professionals and known as UNAC/UHCP, said it called a new strike because contract talks had stalled. Workers accused Kaiser Permanente of unlawfully undermining negotiations and attempting to intimidate workers by warning them about the consequences of striking and directing their peers to report union activity to management.
The union’s president, Charmaine Morales, said in an interview that Kaiser Permanente had unilaterally stopped the bargaining process in mid-December, halting talks both with a national coalition of labor groups representing workers at the healthcare system, as well as with local chapters. Although the company had recently resumed negotiations with workers in Northern California, and agreed to re-starting talks with other union units in California, no dates have been set for bargaining, she said.
“The delay is disappointing,” Morales said. “They need to return to the table, that’s the biggest thing. You can’t go anywhere [in contract talks] if you’re not at the table.”
Meanwhile, the Oakland-based healthcare system in a statement accused the union of attempting “to coerce concessions” by compiling and threatening to release a report describing alleged unethical and unsafe practices by the company, and filed a lawsuit last week arguing the union was not acting…