WA Kaiser Permanente workers to strike Nov. 1 if local agreement is not reached

Despite a tentative agreement being reached in a national Kaiser Permanente contract, Washington state employees of the health care giant have approved a weeklong strike should a deal on their local contract not be reached by the end of the month. Union President Jane Hopkins of SEIU Healthcare 1199 Northwest said striking is a last resort but an action the union – with 3,000 members statewide – is willing to take.

Those 3,000 workers are employed in 36 facilities across the state – including 120 employees among four Spokane-area facilities. These workers include nurses, medical assistants, technicians, housekeeping staff, physical therapists, social workers, community resource specialists and other Kaiser Permanente employees across Washington.

Citing low staffing and lagging wages, workers announced Friday morning that 99% of employees in their contract approved a strike. If a contract is not approved in the next two weeks, Kaiser Permanente workers in Washington will strike from Nov. 1 through Nov. 8.

“Prior to contract negotiations, we’ve warned Kaiser executives for years about staff burnout and the staffing crisis like we’ve seen at other hospitals and health care facilities across the state,” Seattle nurse and bargaining negotiator Jessica Wolfe said. “Because of the situation locally where my nursing colleagues can make $10 or $20 more an hour at any other institution in this region, we cannot recruit staff and we cannot retain staff.”

The announcement of a strike comes on the heels of a three-day nationwide strike of more than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers nationally that took place earlier this month. Labeled the largest strike of health care workers in U.S. history, Washington state workers were banned from participating because their contract did not end until Oct. 31.

An agreement was reached in the nationwide contract Thursday evening.

Terms of the nationwide contract have not been announced. Though praising that agreement, union leaders argued salary minimums would still not be competitive for a state like Washington where the standard cost of living is much higher than the national average.

“Even with the wages that we got nationally, there is no way that they will be able to recruit and retain workers without giving more raises to workers …” Hopkins said.

She also noted the national agreement does not affect Washington state workers’ ability to strike.

Spokane-based worker Marie Neumayer said the issues are the same if a Kaiser employee is in Seattle or Eastern Washington.

“It’s both sides of the state and we’re both working equally as hard and dealing with the same type of staffing issues,” she said.

After results of the strike authorization vote were announced, a Kaiser Permanente spokesperson said the company “remains committed to reaching an agreement that is good for our employees, our members, and our organization, and we will continue to bargain in good faith.”