Hundreds of health care employees took to the streets in Los Angeles on Labor Day to call attention to what they called unfair labor practices, critically low staffing levels and subpar wages in the medical industry.
Most of the ralliers work for Kaiser Permanente, the primary target of the rally.
“We’re here every day to take care of Kaiser’s needs, and Kaiser is not taking care of our needs,” said Tracy McDaniel, a financial counselor at Kaiser West LA. “They’re not taking care of patient’s care needs.”
Kaiser, for its part, pushed back on that notion. In a lengthy statement, the health care giant said it has provided millions of dollars in various pandemic benefits to its workers and has spent the last couple of years on a hiring spree, despite a health care labor shortage.
Kaiser Permanente “took extraordinary steps to support and protect our workforce and their families,” the company said in a statement, “and to support their mental as well as physical health.”
The rally, organized by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, kicked off at around 9:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 4, with speeches by health care professionals and union leaders at Los Feliz Elementary School. The protesters then marched half a mile to Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Hollywood, where a “civil disobedience demonstration” took place.
As part of the demonstration, around 23 rally participants, including McDaniel, were arrested shortly after noon and cited for violating the time limit of the rally. All those cited were released “without incident,” according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Labor Day protest followed months-long negotiations between executives from Kaiser and union leaders over a new contract. The current contract, which expires Sept. 30, was last negotiated before the pandemic, in 2019.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents more than 85,000 employees of the company across seven states and Washington D.C., accused Kaiser of unfair labor practices and refusing to raise employees’ salaries despite making $3 billion in profit in just the first six months of this year.
Health care workers are calling on Kaiser to increase staffing levels and to bring the minimum wage from $17 to $25 an hour for all workers across the system.
Union representatives last week announced a vote to authorize a potential strike should an agreement fail to be reached in the “largest single-employer labor negotiations occurring in the United States.”
Kaiser, in its statement, said it has provided $800 million in special pandemic benefits for employees’ housing needs, special child care grants and additional employee paid leave for COVID-19 illness and exposure.
The company also said its hiring and retention have outpaced other health care organizations.
The average employee turnover rate at Kaiser is 8.5%, Kaiser said, compared to most other health care organizations, which are experiencing an employee turnover rate of 21.4%.
But McDaniel, a veteran of the company for 26 years, rebutted that. The staffing level at the health care system has gone down 50% during the pandemic, she said, which significantly impacts the quality of care patients receive.
“I’ve worked a five-person job with one person on a regular (basis),” McDaniel said. “I’ve worked all through COVID and Kaiser gives us nothing. They don’t want to come to the table and negotiate with us.”
Low staffing has plagued the health care system nationwide since the pandemic.
The American Hospital Association sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March 2022 in which it said hospitals had seen a decrease of around 105,000 employees since February 2020. The national shortage of nurses was on pace to reach 1.1 million by the end of 2022, the letter said.
Southern California has not been immune to this crisis. Several hospitals across the region have recently experienced packed emergency rooms caused by an influx of patients who delayed care during the pandemic, uninsured individuals utilizing the emergency rooms to access medical care, nursing shortages and a shortage of beds in outpatient facilities.
The overcrowding impacts patient care and has resulted in stressful working conditions for employees.
Miriam De La Paz, a ward clerk at Kaiser’s Downey Medical Center, painted similar work experiences at her job.
“We’re doing the jobs for two or three people,” said De La Paz, who has been with Kaiser for almost 20 years. “We are tired.
“We’re asking them to hire more people. They are not hiring fast enough,” she added. “They don’t think it’s a problem because we’re doing the job.
Kaiser, though, has said it is hiring people.
“We hired over 29,000 new employees in 2022 and are on pace to exceed that substantially in 2023,” Kaiser said, “despite the pandemic-driven labor shortage happening across health care.”
But then there’s the question of wages, with De La Paz saying the increase in the cost of living has outpaced pay hikes.
Some employees are living in their cars near Kaiser and they use the gym to shower, De La Paz said. Others have to drive two hours to get to work because they couldn’t afford to live in an area close to their jobs.
But Kaiser said the “single national wage increase” the union’s leadership is seeking this year “would not reflect market labor costs and would prevent us from addressing fair market wages.”
“Our philosophy is to deliver compensation that provides wages above the local market (at or up to 10% above market) to attract and retain the best employees,” Kaiser said in its statement. “Market wages are currently at different levels all over the country, so we need to tailor wage increases so everybody benefits fairly.”
The health care workers, meanwhile, didn’t rally alone on Monday.
Members of several other unions participated in the march to show solidarity, including United Domestic Workers, United Food Commercial Workers and United Teachers Los Angeles. A number of elected officials also participated in the rally to show solidarity for the health care workers.
“We have billions of dollars going into our health care system and going back to shareholders and dividends to executives in corporate salaries,” said Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine. “Health care has the money to pay these workers. It’s a question of priorities.”
