Kaiser Permanente workers in Santa Rosa expected to walk out despite large labor pact

Kaiser Permanente’s operations in Santa Rosa and across Northern California still face the potential of mass walkouts Monday, despite the health giant’s tentative four-year contract with 50,000 employees.

The tentative agreement averted what would have been the largest strike of 2021 with pickets in Southern California, Oregon and Hawaii, in addition to Northern California, where workers still intend to walk out in solidarity with 750 engineers not covered by the contract announced Saturday.

The small band of structural and biomedical engineers have been picketing Kaiser hospitals in Santa Rosa and elsewhere in Northern California since Sept. 18, saying Kaiser is offering wages that will be far less than their peers’ at other large health care providers by the end of their three-year contract.

“We’ve been on strike for 57 days,” said Jason Coester, Santa Rosa strike captain for Stationary Engineers Local 39. “I understand the pharmacists will be joining us on Monday through Friday. We’re out indefinitely.”

Workers are stepping up labor actions across the country, demanding better pay, benefits and conditions, partly driven by a tight labor market and pandemic fatigue. More than 100,000 workers have recently either threatened or gone on strike — including ongoing actions by 10,000 Deere & Co. employees and 1,400 workers from Kellogg Co.

The numbers of picketers on the engineers' line could balloon into hundreds as members of other unions, such as the SEIU housekeepers who work at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center, and nurses join the picket line, one of 22 in Northern California.

In Southern California, however, leaders of Kaiser's Alliance of Health Care Unions quickly sent out word to their members and co-workers that their strike had been called off.

“This contract protects our patients, provides safe staffing, and guarantees fair wages and benefits for every alliance member,” said Hal Ruddick, executive director, Alliance of Health Care Unions.

No local labor union representatives who participated in negotiations were available for interviews Saturday because “they were up all night ... and need to sleep it off,” according to a statement released by Alliance unions.

The alliance pact will cover roughly 50,000 Kaiser Permanente employees in 22 local unions, and it will strengthen the company's partnership with labor, Kaiser leaders said in a statement Saturday. The agreement covers a lot of ground, strengthening protections for employees and patients, providing annual wage increases, maintaining benefits and continuing to offer career development.

“This landmark agreement positions Kaiser Permanente for a successful future focused on providing high-quality health care that is affordable and accessible for our more than 12 million members and the communities we serve,” said Christian Meisner, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Kaiser Permanente.

The agreement includes:

• Guaranteed wage increases each year through 2025 in every region.

• No reductions in health benefits.

• Maintaining retirement benefits.

• Addition of bonus plans.

• New safe staffing and workload language.

The alliance includes 2,500 pharmacy workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers; 21,000 registered nurses in United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals; 7,400 licensed vocational nurses, housekeepers and others in United Steelworkers Local 7600; and about 1,350 UNAC/UHCP-represented physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists in Northern California.

Previously David Sereni, a Kaiser physical therapist in Santa Rosa who is part of the bargaining team, said the primary labor issue was workload, which is affecting patient access, even though Alliance unions were seeking wage increases.

Alliance leaders had said that a key sticking point in negotiations was a Kaiser proposal to institute a two-tier wage structure that would pay workers differently depending on when they were hired or where they worked. Labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University said many companies experimented with such pay structures in the 1980s — and discovered that they not only divide workers but also result in low morale, low productivity and high employee turnover.

The tentative pact, which may take several weeks to ratify, was reached a day after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and seven Democratic colleagues spoke out against the two-tier pay proposal and urged Kaiser to increase its pay offer. “Considering your recent profit margins, we find this offer to be demeaning and unacceptable,” they wrote.

Company leaders have not floated a two-tier structure to its biomedical and structural engineers, Shane Mortensen, chief negotiator for Stationary Engineers Local 39, said. Rather, he said, they have proposed meager wage increases and have broken off talks with union representatives.

“Kaiser keeps releasing that they're actively negotiating with Local 39,” he said. “We haven't been to the bargaining table since Oct. 22, and Kaiser refuses to come back and negotiate, and that's infuriating. We want to sit down and hammer out this agreement.”

The biomedical and structural engineers are the workers who operate and maintain Kaiser's buildings and medical equipment, including electrical distribution, fire life safety systems, X-ray machines, intravenous pumps and MRI machinery.

Coester, an assistant chief engineer in Santa Rosa, said Local 39 has filed unfair labor practice complaints against Kaiser because of the lack of negotiating.

“When they act like they don’t have enough to share, that’s kind of frustrating. It doesn’t seem like there’s a big rush to meet with us,” he said. “The Santa Rosa managers are great and they always have been. We just want what’s fair. We just want to be able to keep doing what we’re doing and retire someday in dignity.”

A statement released by Kaiser Permanente Northern California said, “We are very pleased that Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance of Health Care Unions have reached a tentative agreement. ... KP has not been informed of any changes to Pharmacy Guild or Local 39 Operating Engineers strike plans and our contingency plans remain in effect. We are continuing to bargain in good faith.”

Members of other unions periodically have joined Local 39 engineers on the line over the last two months, said Georgette Bradford, a member of the executive council for the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, but they have become increasingly disgusted that Kaiser will not restart negotiations and want to make the public aware of the engineers’ plight.

“Every time we've gone on strike to demand better care for our patients, the engineers have joined us on the picket line,” said Willow Thorsen, a Kaiser social worker in Santa Rosa. “We're striking now to stand up for our colleagues and our patients.”

This article was compiled from reports by Bloomberg News Service, the Sacramento Bee, Associated Press and Press Demcorat Staff Writer Kathleen Coates.