Talks between Kaiser and a labor union representing health care workers ground to a halt late last week, raising concerns about another strike at California\u2019s largest health care provider.<\/p>\n
The union representing 31,000 Kaiser workers statewide \u2014 including about 2,000 rehab therapists, physician assistants, nurse anesthetists and others in Northern California \u2014 is seeking a new contract with better pay and working conditions. Workers walked off the job in October<\/a> for a five-day strike,\u00a0after their contract expired.<\/p>\n Talks between United Nurses Associations of California\/Union of Health Care Professionals and the Oakland-based health care giant have\u00a0broken down amid sharply different accounts of why negotiations stalled.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The union says Kaiser officials unlawfully walked away from negotiations. Kaiser did pause the talks, Elissa Harrington, a spokesperson for Kaiser in the East Bay, confirmed in an email. She said the decision came after an unnamed labor leader went outside formal bargaining channels and threatened to release what Kaiser described as damaging information about the company if an agreement was not reached.\u00a0Harrington said the union \u201chas refused to share the information it claims to have.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis was received as a clear threat to coerce the national bargaining agreement between Kaiser Permanente and the [alliance of health care unions],\u201d Harrington said, referring to the group that negotiates on behalf of UNAC\/UHCP and other unions.<\/p>\n Anjetta Thackeray, a spokesperson for the union, flatly denied Kaiser\u2019s account.<\/p>\n \u201cThat claim is incorrect, and Kaiser is aware it\u2019s incorrect,\u201d Thackeray said in an email. \u201cThere was no blackmail or threat. We\u2019d rather stay focused on what matters: getting to a contract that invests properly in patient care.\u201d<\/p>\n With talks at an impasse, Harrington said Kaiser officials believe the union is planning a new strike. Harrington said Kaiser officials were shown a text circulating among some employees that read: \u201cThe goal is to get Kaiser\u202fconfused so they don\u2019t know how to staff the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether union members planned to walk off the job again, Thackeray said: \u201cAs of today, UNAC\/UHCP has not served Kaiser with a required 10-day notice to strike,\u201d referencing\u00a0a requirement of the National Labor Relations Act.<\/p>\n Repeated strikes have worked for Kaiser workers in recent history. In 2023, CalMatters reported that other Kaiser employees won steep raises<\/a> after walking off the job twice in 12 months.<\/p>\n Two months after the major strike in Oakland, Santa Clara and elsewhere on the West Coast, both the union and Kaiser appear to be offering\u00a0the same pay proposals <\/a>that were on the table in October. Kaiser management is still offering a 21.5% wage increase over four years, while the union continues to seek a 25% raise over\u00a0the same period.<\/p>\n While that gap may appear small, the competing proposals are \u201cbillions, not millions\u201d of dollars apart, said John August, who led a coalition of Kaiser Permanente unions from 2006 to 2013 and now heads a Cornell University conflict resolution institute.<\/p>\n Kaiser tends to pay workers better than its competitors, August said, but it is not immune to the understaffing and pay pressures that have characterized U.S. \u00a0hospitals for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic \u201cripped the Band-Aid off,\u201d he said, accelerating burnout and departures across the health care workforce.<\/p>\n Kaiser\u2019s proposal would add nearly $2 billion in payroll costs, Harrington said. The union\u2019s proposal would add \u201canother $1 billion in costs over four years, putting affordable health care at risk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Union officials counter that Kaiser, the country\u2019s largest private nonprofit health care organization, can afford the increases.<\/p>\n Kaiser Permanente and its affiliated nonprofit, Risant Health, reported<\/a> $2.6 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2025, following $3.3 billion the previous quarter. The union cites an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit watchdog, which found that Kaiser holds more than $67 billion in reserves<\/a> \u2014 up $27 billion from four years ago \u2014\u00a0and spent $72 million on senior executive compensation in 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not exactly going through tough times,\u201d Joe Guzynski, the union\u2019s executive director and lead negotiator, wrote in a message to members. \u201cAll this, while our own members \u2014 the people making these profits possible \u2014 had to live on salaries that don\u2019t keep pace with the rising cost of living.\u201d<\/p>\n Guzynski and rank-and-file union members say they need significant raises to keep pace with inflation since 2021, along with an expanded pension eligibility, stronger retirement protections and increase staffing levels they say are necessary to safely care for patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Talks between Kaiser and a labor union representing health care workers ground to a halt late last week,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":474748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[15172,15173,64,276,16055,99768,15174,15175,99769,210,1141,1142,3584,12347,1370,728,50,24197,15178,15180,15182,15186,6807,99770,39749,67,132,68,14417,99771],"class_list":{"0":"post-474747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-central-contra-costa","14":"tag-contra-costa-county","15":"tag-east-bay","16":"tag-east-contra-costa","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-health-care","19":"tag-healthcare","20":"tag-hospitals","21":"tag-kaiser-permanente","22":"tag-latest-headlines","23":"tag-local-news","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-oakland","26":"tag-peninsula","27":"tag-san-francisco-county","28":"tag-santa-clara-county","29":"tag-south-bay","30":"tag-strike","31":"tag-tri-valley","32":"tag-unions","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-unitedstates","35":"tag-us","36":"tag-wages","37":"tag-west-contra-costa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115790972936983624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474747","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=474747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}