SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 An estimated 31,000 registered nurses and other front-line Kaiser Permanente health care workers went on strike Tuesday to demand better wages and staffing from the California-based health care giant.<\/p>\n
Organizers say the five-day strike across 500 medical centers and offices in California, Hawaii and Oregon is the largest in the 50-year history of the United Nurses Associations of California\/Union of Health Care Professionals. The strike could grow to include 46,000 people. <\/p>\n
Those on strike, including pharmacists, midwives and rehab therapists, say wages have not kept pace with inflation and there is not enough staffing to keep up with patient demand. <\/p>\n
They are asking for a 25% wage increase over four years to make up for wages they say are at least 7% behind their peers.<\/p>\n
Kaiser Permanente has countered with a 21.5% increase over four years. The company says that represented employees earn, on average, 16% more than their peers, and it would have to charge customers more to meet strikers\u2019 pay demand. <\/p>\n
The company said health clinics and hospitals will remain open during the strike, with some in-person appointments shifted to virtual appointments, and some elective surgeries and procedures being rescheduled. <\/p>\n
Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation\u2019s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 12.6 million members at 600 medical offices and 40 hospitals in largely western U.S. states. It is based in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 An estimated 31,000 registered nurses and other front-line Kaiser Permanente health care workers went…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":304556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,276,38508,57,26621,210,1141,9166,1142,81747,63,24963,57768,6065,212,1607,61,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-304555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-compensation-and-benefits","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-hawaii","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-health-care","15":"tag-health-care-industry","16":"tag-healthcare","17":"tag-hi-state-wire","18":"tag-jobs-and-careers","19":"tag-labor-unions","20":"tag-nursing-care","21":"tag-or-state-wire","22":"tag-oregon","23":"tag-strikes","24":"tag-u-s-news","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115376538658450891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}