Unions representing 85,000 health care workers have reached a tentative agreement with industry giant Kaiser Permanente following a strike over wages and staffing levels, the parties announced Friday.
The deal includes setting minimum hourly wages at $25 in California, where most of Kaiser’s facilities are located, and $23 in other states. Workers will also see a 21% wage increase over four years. The ratification process is scheduled to begin next week.
Both sides said they prioritized patient health care during their talks. Steve Shields, Kaiser’s senior vice president of labor relations, said the deal will not affect rates.
The three-day strike last week involving tens of thousands of workers in multiple states officially ended last Saturday and workers returned to their jobs in Kaiser’s hospitals and clinics that serve nearly 13 million Americans. Union members said understaffing is boosting the hospital system’s profits but hurting patients, and that executives had been bargaining in bad faith during negotiations.
“Millions of Americans are safer today because tens of thousands of dedicated healthcare workers fought for and won the critical resources they need and that patients need,” said Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, in a statement Friday. “This historic agreement will set a higher standard for the healthcare industry nationwide.”
The tentative agreement also includes protective terms around subcontracting and outsourcing, as well as initiatives to invest in the current workforce and address the staffing crisis. The workers’ last contract was negotiated in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have an interest in helping build the health care workforce of the future,” Shields said during a news briefing Friday with both sides.
The coalition of unions had given the company notice that another strike, from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8, was possible if the latest round of negotiations fell through. It also said the Oct. 31 expiration of a contract covering the Seattle area would enable another 3,000 workers to join picket lines.
“What the parties have achieved here in Oakland demonstrates, once again, that collective bargaining works,” said acting Secretary of Labor Julie A. Su, who helped mediate negotiations this week. “When workers have a voice and a seat at the table, it can result in historic gains for workers, their employer and our country.”
Kaiser Permanente, based in Oakland, confirmed the deal in a social media post on Friday, noting that the strike notice for November “has been canceled.”
President Joe Biden applauded the tentative deal in a statement Friday, echoing his support for the health care unions. The president last month joined picketing United Auto Workers in Michigan on the 12th day of their strike against major carmakers, becoming the first known sitting president in U.S. history to join an active picket line.
“We owe a tremendous debt to health care workers and the hard-working men and women who make their work possible,” Biden said in a statement. “Health care workers and support staff kept our hospitals — and our nation — going during the dark months of the pandemic. They had our backs during one of our nation’s toughest times. We must continue to have theirs.”
Last week’s three-day strike at facilities in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state was a last resort after Kaiser executives ignored the short-staffing crisis worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, union officials said.
“This deal is life-changing for frontline health care workers like me, and life-saving for our patients,” said Yvonne Esquivel, a pediatric medical assistant at Kaiser Permanente in Gilroy.
Their goal was to bring the problems to the public’s consciousness for support, according to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
“The new [four-year] agreement will offer Coalition-represented employees competitive wages, excellent benefits, generous retirement income plans, and valuable job training opportunities that support their economic well-being, advance our shared mission, and keep Kaiser Permanente a best place to work and receive care,” read a joint-statement from Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, on Friday.
The strikers include licensed vocational nurses, home health aides and ultrasound sonographers, as well as technicians in the radiology, X-ray, surgical, pharmacy and emergency departments.
“No health care worker wants to go on strike,” Caroline Lucas, the coalition’s executive director, said Thursday. “I hope that the last few days have helped escalate this issue.”
The company warned the work stoppage could cause delays in people getting appointments and scheduling non-urgent procedures.
Unions representing Kaiser workers in August asked for a $25 hourly minimum wage, as well as increases of 7% each year in the first two years and 6.25% each year in the two years afterward.
Kaiser, which turned a $2.1 billion profit for the quarter, said in a statement last week that it proposed minimum hourly wages between $21 and $23 depending on the location. The company said it also completed hiring 10,000 more people, adding to the 51,000 workers the hospital system has brought on board since 2022.
The deal comes a day after Kaiser agreed to pay a $50 million fine as part of a larger settlement with the state of California, which found major deficiencies in its delivery of behavioral health care services. The settlement requires the health care giant to provide its patients with more timely access to behavioral health care, among other improvements, and to invest an additional $150 million in those programs over the next five years.
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