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Kaiser Permanente and a coalition of unions representing roughly a third of its workforce have reached a tentative contract agreement, a week after tens of thousands of workers walked off the job in protest.
The tentative deal, announced Friday morning on social media,was struck amid escalating pressure from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents more than 85,000 workers at Kaiser hospitals and clinics across the country.
Both Kaiser Permanente, which is based in Oakland, and SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, the biggest member of the coalition, said they were excited to have reached an agreement and thanked Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su for her involvement.
“Su was instrumental in advancing talks and helping to facilitate a successful conclusion to these negotiations,” said Sarah Levesque, secretary-treasurer of OPEIU Local 2, another union in the coalition whose members include Kaiser optometrists and pharmacists.
The tentative agreement includes a 21% increase in wages over four years, which labor leaders said would improve employee retention;phasing in a $25-per-hour minimum wage for coalition workers in California and a $23-per-hour minimum in other states; “protective terms” with regard to outsourcing; and initiatives to improve staffing issues, including streamlining hiring practices, according to statements released Friday by the coalition and by Kaiser.
Last week, more than 75,000 Kaiser employees went on strike in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Virginia and Washington, D.C., in what labor leaders described as the biggest strike by healthcare workers in U.S. history. In most states, the strike lasted three days; in some areas it was a single day.
Among the wide range of workers who went on strike were licensed vocational nurses, X-ray technicians, surgical technicians, phlebotomists, medical assistants, pharmacy technicians and respiratory therapists, as well as support staff such as housekeepers and food service workers.
Workers said they were protesting “bad faith bargaining” by Kaiser executives as the unions negotiated over wages and other issues that labor leaders faulted for a chronic staffing crisis that strained employees and jeopardized patient care. Unions also said the raises Kaiser was offering wouldn’t keep up with the rising cost of living.
Kaiser leaders said they were trying to reach an agreement in good faith and argued that the organization had been working to address the effects of a national crunch on healthcare staffing, successfully hitting a target to hire 10,000 new employees represented by the coalition.
Days after the initial strike ended, the unions warned that another, even bigger strike could be in the works from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8, after a union contract covering workers in the Seattle area expires.
The tentative deal, if ratified, is expected to avert that action, and Kaiser said the unions had withdrawn notices for the November strike.Workers plan to start voting on Oct. 18, the coalition said Friday.The agreement would last four years and be retroactive to Oct. 1.
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