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Some mornings, Rolando Medina wakes up desperate to sleep a little longer and has to will himself out of bed to make it to his job at a Kaiser Permanente behavioral health clinic in Simi Valley, Calif.
5 things to know about the Kaiser strike if you’re a patient
Medina said he finds motivation from a look at his family as he walks out the door. And from the $100 tank of gas that used to cost $40. And from the monthly rent that has ballooned to $2,200 for the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his spouse and four of his children.
“There are times when I think to myself I don’t want to go to work, I’d like to sleep a bit longer,” Medina said. “But I know it has to be done to take care of my family.”
He is among 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health-care workers striking this week over wages, outsourcing and staffing. Unionized staff and Kaiser are fighting over bread-and-butter issues that organized labor and employers have tussled over for decades, albeit supercharged for a workforce still dogged by staffing shortages and high inflation after the pandemic.
They also are part of a highly energized union movement that is pressing its advantage amid worker shortages in numerous industries. The U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in September, more than twice what analysts forecast. The unusually strong numbers amid the Federal Reserve’s ongoing efforts to slow the economy lends additional leverage to workers.
They are represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which is trying to pressure the nonprofit health-care organization to agree to larger wage increases each year. It has accused the company of “bargaining in bad faith” and called its contract offers insulting.
Kaiser is a privately owned nonprofit health-care provider, among the largest in an increasingly prominent crop of “managed care” organizations that operate health insurance plans alongside hospitals, specialized clinics, labs and pharmacies.
“Kaiser Permanente, our industry, and our employees are now operating in a new cultural, labor, and post-pandemic environment that we are all working hard to understand,” the nonprofit wrote Wednesday in an unsigned statement.
An earlier proposal from Kaiser would have set minimum wages at $21 to $23, depending on the location starting in 2024, to be increased by $1 each year of a four-year contract. A union proposal submitted in early August calls for 7 percent annual raises for the first two years of a four-year contract, and would set a $25-per-hour minimum across the company.
Kaiser officials say their employees already earn higher wages and benefits compared with competitors and were provided with more than $1 billion in special pandemic benefits, child-care grants and other rewards since 2020.
A Kaiser spokesperson said Thursday that the organization “leads total compensation in every market where we operate,” with a staff attrition rate of 7 percent.
“In some places, like in Southern California, a Kaiser Permanente employee leaving for a similar job at another organization would on average face a 20-plus percent pay cut and lower benefits,” the Kaiser spokesperson said.
But Medina says his own wage of $35 an hour doesn’t come close to covering expenses in his area, where regular unleaded gas can cost about $6 a gallon. “Inflation has taken a huge toll,” Medina said.
That’s one reason why he spends an extra 40 hours a week driving for Lyft in the evenings. But he blames his fatigue on Kaiser’s staffing issues — the organization, he said, doesn’t hire enough workers to handle the caseload at a time when mental health services are in short supply across the country.
Kaiser Permanente and its peers have struggled with an exodus of staffers in the three years since the nation became embroiled in the pandemic. Both sides admit there is a staffing problem, but there is disagreement as to its cause: The union charges that Kaiser isn’t hiring fast enough, while Kaiser points to a “great resignation” of workers in the health-care sector.
Each workday at Kaiser, Medina spends eight hours helping therapists with scheduling, managing calendars, coordinating their patient loads and sending out letters. But he and other unionized workers say Kaiser’s hiring has not kept pace with its caseload, forcing them to take on additional job duties.
Medina said he has to step away often from his regular job to do the job of a receptionist — “take care of our patients, check them in” — something that he says prevents him from doing his own job well. Because of understaffing, he said, it’s common for patients to wait up to a month to see a therapist.
“We’re filling in the gaps for the workers we don’t have,” Medina said. “Kaiser knows this is happening, but to them, as long as we can make it work in a sense, everything is fine.”
His lunches and other breaks during the day are reserved for naps, Medina says, as he takes any chance he can to catch up on sleep. “Every [time] I get an opportunity, I do get some rest,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate because we know Kaiser has the funds,” he said. “We know they can stop the strike at any time because we’ve seen how much they’ve generated.”
The organization’s executives say those labor challenges, along with higher caseloads and its own inflation impacts, have led to a surge in costs over the past year. The organization ran a net loss of $4.5 billion in 2022 on $95.4 billion in operating revenue. The previous year it reported a positive net income of $8.1 billion.
So far this year, Kaiser has reported hiring 10,086 new unionized employees as of Wednesday, outstripping a landmark that both sides had previously set for 2023.
Part of the goal of the strike, Medina says, is to “make sure Kaiser understands how short staffed the clinic and hospitals are.”
“We’re hoping and praying they do manage to focus and get to the point where they appreciate everything we do,” Medina said. “We’re standing up for each other and ourselves.”
Kaiser Permanente workers strike
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