Stationary engineer Sal Fonseca and about 20 of his co-workers have been picketing daily at Kaiser Permanente’s South Sacramento Medical Center for 62 days, but their ranks swelled Thursday morning as members of three unions joined them as part of a two-day sympathy strike.
Scores of workers represented by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West stood out in the crowd of about 300 with their signature purple T-shirts. They waved signs saying, “Heroes treated like zeroes” and ‘We support Local 39,” and they cheered as passing motorists honked their horns in support.
“This is awesome. Praise God! Hallelujah!” said Fonseca, one of about 700 members of Stationary Engineers Local 39 in Northern California. “It’s awesome. We appreciate it. We appreciate SEIU-UHW — and all the people that come out on their days off. We appreciate their sacrifice. Thank you so much.”
According to SEIU-UHW, the sympathy strike is the largest in the country.
While Kaiser has been telling the public that it is negotiating in good faith, Fonseca said, company negotiators have refused over the course of much of the strike to sit down and discuss wages and pensions.
In a statement released Thursday, Kaiser executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames said: “Unfortunately, after many hours bargaining on Tuesday and Wednesday, there is no movement in negotiations with Local 39. The union insists it receive much more — in some cases nearly two times more — than other union agreements covering Kaiser Permanente employees.”
Kaiser’s proposal will keep overall compensation for Local 39 engineers among the highest in their profession, at an average of more than $180,000 in total wages and benefits, said Gaskill-Hames, senior vice president of hospital and health plan operations for Kaiser Permanente Northern California. She added that the company has not proposed any takeaways and is not suggesting any differentiation between current and future employees.
Local 39 chief negotiator Shane Mortensen told The Sacramento Bee that the company’s offer would leave members earning less than engineers at Sutter and other big health care providers by the end of their three-year agreement.
Lanette Griffin and other unionized Kaiser employees say the company is quibbling over small wage increases for rank-and-file employees after they put their lives on the line amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, they say, Kaiser executives are reaping big pay increases as the health care giant logged billions of dollars in income gains this year.
But health finance expert Paul Ginsburg of the University of Southern California said he doesn’t know that Kaiser should be paying the same wages as a Sutter Health. California’s Department of Justice sued Sutter, accusing it of using its market dominance in Northern California to inflate prices, Ginsburg said, but Kaiser has thrived by instituting operational efficiencies that have reduced costs for its customers.
The sympathy strikes are being held at Kaiser hospitals all around Northern California, with members of SEIU-UHW, the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29, and the Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20 joining in solidarity. The unions represent such front-line health care workers as lab technicians, respiratory therapists, optometrists, clinical laboratory scientists, X-ray technicians and housekeepers.
On Friday, two unions representing roughly 26,000 registered nurses and mental health clinicians are set to walk out around the north state, though Gaskill-Hames implored them not to disrupt care for their patients.
Labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University told The Bee that concerns about patient care often keep health care workers from striking and that it’s unusual to have such a large sympathy strike at any U.S. employer. Kaiser workers must be unhappy with how negotiations are going, she said, to give a day’s pay to protest for their co-workers. Some workers also have been devoting a portion of their days off to picket with the engineers.
Ken Jacobs, the chair of the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education, said the sympathy strike might well be a commentary on the overall state of labor relations at Kaiser right now. The company employs a sizable number of unionized workers, with nearly 75% of its 300,000-plus employees working under collective bargaining agreements.
Dressed up as the Grinch, Kaiser employee Michael Ward held aloft a sign that read: “I didn’t steal Christmas. Kaiser did!” He said he didn’t feel company executives were giving engineers the respect they deserved at the bargaining table.
On Monday, Kaiser Permanente reached a tentative agreement on a three-year contract with Northern California pharmacists, two days after it had averted a strike with a tentative four-year contract with 50,000 employees in Southern California, Oregon and Hawaii.
Gaskill-Hames noted that some of Kaiser’s outpatient pharmacies were closed last Thursday and Friday, and signs at the South Sacramento hospital alerted patients that it was closed. Staff at the facilities would provide instructions to members on how to get any medication needed immediately, she said.
Kaiser hospitals and emergency rooms remain open, Gaskill-Hames said, and patients there will receive care from Kaiser physicians and experienced clinical managers and staff, with the support of trained and qualified contingency workers.
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 12:52 PM.
Cathie Anderson covers health care for The Bee. Growing up, her blue-collar parents paid out of pocket for care. She joined The Bee in 2002, with roles including business columnist and features editor. She previously worked at papers including the Dallas Morning News, Detroit News and Austin American-Statesman.