Strike by Kaiser Permanente workers is about more than money

This article was produced by Capital Main It is published here with permission The nation s physical condition care workers want to be paid fairly but that s hardly news you could say the same for any worker group in the United States So what is driving the deep dissatisfaction among so a large number of nurses physicians assistants and therapists Increasingly the answer is simple time and materials Robustness care workers consistently statement that inadequate staffing and lack of time to spend with their patients have led them to conclude that their employers no longer strive to deliver top-level care even at physical condition care organizations known for such quality I don t know why they choose not to do it stated Nicole Jimenez a registered nurse with Kaiser Permanente in California One of their tenets is Best person care every time Knowing that they have the guidance to make that difference but don t do it is it s sad It s frustrating The new contract-related walkout by Kaiser employees in California Oregon and Hawaii almost perfectly illustrates the disconnect workers feel In a message about the five-day strike Kaiser bureaucrats declared that the heart of this negotiation is a dispute about wages Countless Kaiser workers by contrast without delay pointed to the lack of staffing as the primary reason they walked While Kaiser functionaries say they re working within state-mandated guidelines nurses and other assistants say the company chronically understaffs its facilities despite having agreed to specific ratios during previous contract negotiations and person care suffers as a product Further they say Kaiser has in modern years begun moving away from a longstanding model of shared decision-making among physicians managers and employees Dubbed the Labor Management Partnership that model has been central to Kaiser s success workers say with their input actively and continuously solicited We dedicate our lives to caring for our patients and yet at the end of a day we feel like we didn t do a good enough job of it announced Kim Mullen an RN who works primarily with stroke casualties at Kaiser s South Bay Physiological Center in Harbor City near Long Beach It s not because we don t have phenomenal registered nurses and assistants It s because we re not staffed appropriately On Oct Jimenez and Mullen joined the short-term strike which was aimed at focusing constituents attention on the negotiation stalemate between Kaiser and the Alliance of Soundness Care Unions a coalition of labor organizations led by the United Nurses Associations of California Union of Medical Care Professionals Disclosure The UNAC UHCP is a financial supporter of Capital Main Kaiser is a major participant in the West The physical condition giant has more than million members its term for patients in California in Oregon and southern Washington state and in Hawaii Overall the organization declares more than million members nationally To be sure there s a money component to the current bargaining which has been going on since May in the run-up to the expiration of the previous contract at the end of September The Alliance is seeking a pay increase over four years which its negotiators describe as a response both to newest inflation and to their accepting a raise over four years in their previous contract Over the unit of that deal which was negotiated in the middle of the COVID- pandemic workers buying power declined Kaiser s offer has remained steady at In a comment provided by Kaiser communications manager Vincent Staupe the company described the unions wage proposal as out of step with in the modern day s economic realities and claimed the resulting increase in payroll would lead to higher rates for members and customers with serious realm implications It s hard to imagine that the two sides can t bridge a difference in wages spread over four years The Alliance s other requests however are a key element of the stalemate The union negotiators want stronger consequences when Kaiser ignores agreed-upon staffing levels and they are seeking more say on how time spent with patients is scheduled Kaiser the Alliance negotiators say has balked at those requests As a nurse from the minute you clock in it s like you have a -card deck of things you need to do in order to care for your patients noted Mullen who is part of the Alliance s bargaining crew And as your day progresses when you don t have adequate staff or help more and more cards are added to that deck At the end of the day although you ve worked nonstop you feel defeated and you worry for the patients you re caring for Physicians therapists nurses and other workers have pushed back against what they see as Kaiser s inadequate staffing In the past three years mental soundness care workers in both Northern and Southern California have staged strikes one lasting nearly days to wrench concessions from Kaiser on basic issues such as having enough staff and time to adequately care for patients The California Department of Managed Strength Care has repeatedly fined Kaiser for its deficient mental healthcare care services and in it negotiated a million settlement with the company that included a record million fine and a million financing toward addressing the shortcomings in Kaiser s mental vitality care Mullen revealed that Kaiser agreed in its contract to staffing ratios in several areas of care that are better than what the state requires But she stated those ratios are routinely ignored The issue first and foremost in my heart is the lack of safe staffing added Jimenez an intensive care nurse whose work takes her to all departments within Kaiser s facility in Ontario California It has not changed for years We re stretched so thin that it s unsafe for the patients and the nurses and we re seeing nurses just get burned out leaving for jobs that don t require bedside care Kaiser bureaucrats did not respond to specific questions about the staffing levels In its declaration the company reported Kaiser Permanente meets and often exceeds state- mandated nurse-to-patient ratios and staffing standards On its website Kaiser Permanente describes itself as one of the nation s largest not-for-profit wellness plans That designation applies strictly to its healthcare insurance arm and the corporation that owns Kaiser s hospitals The company s Permanente Diagnostic Groups the vast physician organizations that certainly provide the care to patients are for-profit ventures and they are powerhouses Kaiser and its subsidiaries stated net income of billion for the second quarter of alone a billion increase over the previous year The company had nearly billion in net income in and it s sitting on billion in reserves a figure that has grown by half in just the past four years And the organization is growing In Kaiser formed a subsidiary Risant Vitality whose sole function is to acquire other robustness systems across the country It already has added two such companies with the goal of acquiring four or five more within the next meager years Risant alone could drive annual revenue of billion to billion The takeaway for Kaiser s workers is that tools are not an issue The company they believe could improve staffing levels but it s cheaper not to In its report concerning the October strike Kaiser described the walkout as unnecessary adding It is designed to disrupt the lives of our patients the very people we are all here to serve It s just the opposite of that mentioned Mullen the nurse in Harbor City We re doing it so that we can care for our patients the way they need to be cared for Capital Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the majority pressing economic environmental and social issues of our time including economic inequality circumstances change soundness care threats to democracy hate and extremism and immigration Copyright Capital Main