Kaiser Permanente and unions representing many of its workers have reached a tentative agreement, forestalling future strikes like one a week ago involving 75,000 employees.
While pay was an issue, many of the workers had said they were more concerned about severe staffing shortages, worker burnout and the need for measures to protect their jobs, as the Deseret News reported at the time of the strike.
On X, formerly Twitter, union officials announced: “The frontline health care workers of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions are excited to have reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente. We are thankful for the instrumental support of acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su.”
The unions at Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit health care system, came together to negotiate as the coalition.
Kaiser Permanente’s post on X was nearly identical and promised more details would be released later Friday.
As NBC News reported, “Workers including pharmacists, vocational nurses, housekeepers, medical assistants, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians and respiratory therapists left hospitals and medical facilities at 6 a.m. local time on Oct. 4. The strike also included employees who served in Washington state, Oregon, California and Colorado, Virginia and Washington, D.C.”
The strike lasted three days, but the largest union in the coalition, SEIU-UHW, had warned that a “longer, stronger strike” might be called in November, absent an agreement. The union said at the time that the negotiation had gotten stuck on employee raises. “The union coalition wants raises that at least keep up with cost-of-living increases,” per the earlier Deseret News report.
Kaiser Permanente services are for dues-paying members. Doctors and most nurses did not join the strike.