SAN DIEGO — San Diego healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente will join the picket line on Wednesday with over 40 different facilities across the state to bring awareness to unsafe staffing and a patient care crisis.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions represents 85,000 frontline workers and it is calling on Kaiser to make significant investments in the workforce as contracts are set to expire on September 30. With less than three months until the contract expiration, tens of thousands of employees are calling on management to provide safe levels of staffing.
"We are understaffed, overworked, and stretched so thin during our shifts. Kaiser has made billions in profits over the last five years, yet they're not investing enough to keep caregivers at our facility. We're demanding that Kaiser put patient care over profits and provide safe staffing at all their facilities," said Michael Ramey Ultrasound Tech, La Mesa Medical Offices and President of OPEIU 30.
The Coalition said in a press release: "Despite being a non-profit organization, which means it pays no income taxes on its earnings and extremely limited property taxes, Kaiser Permanente has reported more than $21 billion in profit over the last five years. Kaiser Permanente's net worth doubled between 2018 and 2022 to $58.9 billion. The CEO of Kaiser Permanente was compensated more than $16 million in 2021. Forty-nine executives at Kaiser Permanente are compensated more than $1 million annually."
More pickets will be held at the same time at other Kaiser Permanente facilities in Washington state, Oregon, and Colorado.
Kaiser Permanente provided the following in a statement by Frank Hurtarte, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Kaiser Permanente Southern California and Hawaii:
"Our priority is to reach an agreement that ensures we can continue to provide market-competitive pay and outstanding benefits. We are confident that we will be able to reach an agreement that strengthens our position as a best place to work and ensures that the high-quality care our members expect from us remains affordable and easy to access.
We have been and will continue to address the real issues that are affecting health care and our employees. On the heels of the global pandemic and given today's economy, these challenges include inflation and rising costs to deliver health care, increasing competition from non-traditional businesses, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and increases in the demand for access to health care. We look to the Coalition to be a constructive partner in helping address these and other challenges affecting us all.
It's worth remembering that during the pandemic, we took extraordinary steps to support and protect our workforce. This included providing $800 million in employee assistance to ensure that frontline employees had access to alternate housing options, special childcare grants, and additional paid leave for COVID-19 illness and exposure."