Kaiser strike shutters some services Thursday. Friday could be worse
In San Jose, Richard Marsh and his swollen foot were turned back at the shuttered X-ray department. In Redwood City, Victoria Villegas couldn’t get her blood drawn.
Across the Bay Area and beyond, Kaiser patients were running into locked doors and long waits for lab work, eye care and more — and the delays could get worse Friday if the company can’t work out a deal with its striking engineers.
On Thursday, tens of thousands of Kaiser union workers in the Bay Area, Sacramento area and Central Valley — from X-ray technicians to phlebotomists to housekeepers — joined the walkout in a sympathy strike that sent the company scrambling to find reinforcements. On Friday, at least 20,000 nurses and thousands of mental health professionals who work for the company are expected to strike in solidarity.
The engineers — who keep everything from boilers and refrigeration to air conditioning and generators up and running — have been on strike since their contract expired in September in a quest for higher wages. Kaiser has said the engineers earn more than $180,000 in combined wages and benefits and that union leadership is requesting “unreasonable increases” beyond what other unions have demanded.
Marsh, on the other hand, found it all a pain — besides the one in his foot.
“I’m going over to the emergency department to see if they’ll let me have an X-ray. If not, I’m screwed,” the San Jose resident said. “I’ve had Kaiser since 1987. I’ve never run into anything like this.”
The turbulence comes nearly two years into a pandemic, as exhausted health care workers pushed to the brink lean on their employers, many of which have taken a financial hit thanks to COVID-19, for better compensation, higher staffing levels and more.
Earlier this week, Kaiser reached a deal with thousands of its pharmacists, averting another possible strike that had sent patients rushing to refill prescriptions before planned pharmacy shutdowns. But so far, no deal with the engineers has emerged.
In the meantime, Kaiser has lined up reinforcements to get through this latest labor action.
“During the strike, care will be provided by physicians and experienced clinical managers and staff, with the support of trained and qualified contingency staff,” Kaiser said in a statement. “We will not postpone any urgent or emergency care, or critical medical appointments.”
But, the company acknowledged, it was postponing some non-urgent appointments and procedures, and its Northern California medical centers were diverting stroke and severe heart attack patients to other hospitals through Friday. Wait times at emergency departments were also expected to be extra long.
Michelle Gaskill-Hames, senior vice president of hospital and health plan operations at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, would not say which other hospitals were taking Kaiser patients but said “it’s a broad list of partners.”
Up the Peninsula from Marsh, Villegas was trying to get blood drawn at the health care giant’s Redwood City medical center on Thursday morning. But, she said, Kaiser told her to return Monday instead.
“They’re closed,” Villegas said.
Nearby, patients were continuing to stream in and out of the facility’s COVID booster shot clinic, and Thomas Schapp, who was heading in to see his doctor, said he’d been notified of the strike ahead of time but didn’t think it would affect his appointment. Still, some Kaiser members said they were waiting to get booster shots and flu shots until after the strikes.
Down the street, striking SEIU-UHW union workers clad in purple carried signs and chanted in support of the striking engineers, cheering when passing cars honked in approval.
Ben Maka, an engineer at Kaiser Santa Clara, said he’s been out at the strike line at least five days a week since it began more than 60 days ago.
“We’re not asking to be the highest-paid in the valley. We just want to be paid like our peers,” Maka said.
Gaskill-Hames said Kaiser will continue to “bargain in good faith” but would not get into the specifics of the negotiations. “Our patients shouldn’t be brought into it,” she said.
A spokesperson for the engineers’ union, IUOE Stationary Engineers, Local 39, did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
Joseph Renois is a cancer patient who goes to Kaiser Santa Clara five days a week for radiation treatment.
“Yesterday, they put me in the machine to get my radiation treatment and they said I had to switch to another machine and do it again because it was malfunctioning,” he said. “It’s the second time it happened in two months.”
The striking engineers aren’t surprised.
“There’s a lot of equipment that’s breaking down, that’s not being fixed correctly,” said Mark Ceanez, a biomedical engineer at Kaiser Santa Clara who was picketing Thursday.
Kaiser, he said, is flying in engineers from Southern California to help fix the equipment.
“The equipment that we work on requires preventative maintenance every six months every year, so all of the equipment in there is becoming due,” Ceanez said.
Gaskill-Hames said Kaiser is “disappointed that labor leaders have put us in this position.”
But Kaiser employees who walked off the job Thursday said they support the engineers continuing to strike.
“They’re effectively getting a pay cut and housing prices are getting higher in the Bay Area,” said Ethan Ruskin, a health educator at Kaiser San Jose and a member of the SEIU-UHW. “For a company that made $6 billion in profit during the pandemic to be offering that — they’re not asking for the moon, they’re asking for a fair contract.”
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