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Senator Bernie Sanders and seven other Senate Democratic lawmakers urged Kaiser Permanente to negotiate a new contract with more than 30, 000 healthcare workers in various states planning to go to the strike on Monday, according to The Hill.
Kaiser Permanente , commonly known simply as Kaiser, is a non-profit integrated healthcare consortium based in Oakland, California. It has one of the largest health care plans in the United States, with more than 12 million members. It operates 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical offices, with more than 80, , 03 doctors and nurses.
In a letter to Kaiser Permanente CEO, Greg Adams, Senators expressed their support for company nurses and other healthcare workers who threaten to strike in defense of their demands for better wages, calling them “heroes and heroines” for fighting on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. .
“Instead of treating these workers with the dignity and respect they deserve, he has demanded that they accept only a 2% pay increase and a two-tier system that allows them to allow lower wages to be paid to new workers, ”the senators wrote, referring to Kaiser Permanente. “Considering their recent profit margins, we consider this offer to be degrading and unacceptable.”
Kaiser Permanente employees in California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii announced that they will go on strike on Monday after rejecting a contract offer they said did not provide sufficient pay increases or address severe workforce burnout.
The unions they represent workers have noted that Kaiser Permanente reported $ 2.2 billion in earnings last year and has $ 44 .5 billion in cash reserves, a point that the senators emphasized in their letter.
“Let’s be clear. The profits of the company did not come by accident. They happened because their employees were at their jobs, working tirelessly in the midst of a life-threatening pandemic, ”the senators wrote.
Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Cory Booker (DN.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (DN.Y.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D -Mass. ) And Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Joined Sanders in the letter to Kaiser Permanente.
The strike could disrupt healthcare coverage on the West Coast amid a deadly coronavirus pandemic , a situation both parties have said they want to avoid.
Kaiser Permanente is committed to continuing to provide services and is attempting to hire part-time nurses in the event of a strike.
In a statement Friday, Kaiser Permanente said the company believes it is “on the way to reaching a settlement.”
“We believe we can reach an agreement that meets our shared interests and avoid unnecessary and harmful interruptions in care, ”said Kaiser Permanente. “We also absolutely believe that when we conclude the negotiation of this cycle and overcome the disastrous pandemic, we will emerge stronger and more united than ever.”
Other workers are joined in solidarity strike
Other trade union organizations are announcing one-day sympathy strikes with Kaiser Permanente workers for next week, according to The Sacramento Bee.
More healthcare workers are coming out in support of the approximately 35, 000 Kaiser union workers planning to go on an indefinite strike on Monday and of the 700 biomedical and structural engineers who have been on the picket line since 18 September.
The labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner told The Sacramento Bee that the solidarity strikes are a big problem: “It is very revealing that all these workers, 20, 000, 30, 000, however many they are, they are willing to go on strike in solidarity with other workers. In the rest of the world, this happens all the time, but that is not something that happens in the United States. ”
Over the course of this week, the number of sympathy strikes with Kaiser employees Permanent has increased and, as of Thursday, unions representing approximately 64, 03 workers had pledged to picket solidarity for a day.
The entry of these workers into this labor confrontation means that Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California will also feel the impact of a strike that otherwise it would have been focused on Southern California.