Kaiser Permanente nurses reached a deal with the Oakland-based healthcare conglomerate on Nov. 13, two days before they were set to strike.
The healthcare workers had been demanding Kaiser to scrap its proposed two-tier wage system, which would bring new hires in at 30% less pay than established nurses and nurses who’d been hired six months prior to the new contract taking effect.
The Alliance of Health Care Unions and the United Nurses Associations of California / Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) represent thousands of nurses in Southern California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Hawaii and represent pharmacists and therapists in Northern California, according to the groups’ websites.
Labor economist Jane Carter, who was part of the negotiations team, said during contract negotiations with Kaiser the unions were fighting against proposed raises that barely kept up with inflation and the two-tiered wage system proposed by Kaiser to “combat rising costs of healthcare.”
“We started bargaining with Kaiser about . . . seven months ago now and the employer was proposing a two-tiered wage system and only 1% every year of the contract,” Carter said in a Zoom call.
Carter said the coronavirus exacerbated a nationwide shortage of nurses and Kaiser’s hiring policies would further compound the wage problem.
An SJSU faculty member and 30-year Santa Clara Valley Medical Center registered nurse, who wished to remain anonymous for privacy concerns, said for new nurses graduating from programs including SJSU Valley Foundation School of Nursing, employer-to-employee treatment is a greater concern than finding a job with adequate pay.
“You're not going to stay at a job where you don't feel supported, no matter what you're being paid,” she said in a Zoom call. “Especially being a new nurse, you need to feel emotionally supported, mentored and that you're not going to kill a patient...then if you feel like you're not getting paid what you're worth, then you can look somewhere else.”
Carter said more than 40,000 nurses will be needed in California within the next few years and the state’s education pipeline isn’t keeping up with that demand.
“I don't think lowering the wage 26% of a new nurse fresh out of school is going to help attract those nurses that are crucial and much needed,” she said.
Kaiser acknowledged a growing cost of healthcare but amid the COVID-19 pandemic the company remained profitable, bringing in $50 billion in profit in 2020 alone, Carter said.
“It's a behemoth of a company,” Carter said. “[Kaiser’s] saying that it's because healthcare costs are rising and that labor costs are too high or too difficult to sustain when it's cutting into [its] profits.”
Anjetta Thackeray, communications manager for The Alliance of Health Care Unions, said in an email the strike was averted after Kaiser agreed to 3% wage increases in 2021 and 2022, with 2% raises and 2% guaranteed lump-sum bonuses for 2023 and 2024.
Thackeray said Kaiser also removed the two-tiered wage system proposal and made raises retroactive to Oct. 1.
Johanna Noriega, a nurse since 2001 who has worked with Kaiser in Southern California since 2009, said the pandemic has been especially hard on understaffed-hospital nurses who can’t take time off without making the hospital operate at considerably unsafe staffing levels.
“They're overworked and they feel underappreciated and they just went through a traumatic year and a half,” Noriega said. “Giving them the opportunity to take off their benefitted time is impossible for the employer because they don't have the staff.”
She also said the potential hiring deterrent in the proposed two-tier wage system would have negatively affected patient outcomes.
Noriega said being understaffed “increases our risk for errors and potentially harming patients.”
The SJSU faculty member said nurses who put off retiring to help during the COVID-19 crisis are now retiring en masse, burnt out and exhausted.
“There was this overwhelming sense of duty. It was unreal,” she said. “It was pretty phenomenal.”
The university faculty member added that there’s a nursing shortage not because of a lack of willing nursing students, but because there’s a lack of institutions like SJSU with nursing programs. Nursing programs used to be run through hospitals rather than universities, she said.
“There is not a shortage of students that want to become nurses. Hundreds of students are denied access to nursing programs because the programs are full,” the anonymous faculty member said. “All hospitals used to have a nursing program, they would hire nurses as needed.”
Because nurses are emotionally attached to their jobs, Noriega said employers will often use their drive to care for patients to manipulate them into ending negotiations early.
“We go into nursing not because of the money, we go into nursing because it's a calling and we want to care for others,” she said. “The employer definitely pulls on the heartstrings of those nurses and those healthcare providers or professionals because they know that's what will get them.”
