Kaiser Permanente and a coalition of unions representing 75,000 health care workers announced Friday that they have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract.
The agreement ends an ongoing labor dispute over low wages and staffing shortages that culminated in a three-day strike in multiple states last week, making it the largest health worker strike in U.S. history. become.
“The Kaiser Permanente Federation of Frontline Health Care Workers is excited to have reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente as of this morning,” the unions said in a statement. “We would like to thank Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su for her tremendous support.”
Kaiser Permanente issued a similar statement praising Su.
The Kaiser Permanente union federation said it has been fighting since April over staffing, wages and outsourcing. The union said Kaiser needs to make greater investments in staffing to reduce employee turnover and reduce wait times for growing numbers of patients.
The union was demanding a minimum wage of $25 an hour, as well as increases of 7% annually for the first two years and 6.25% annually for the following two years.
Contracts for hundreds of jobs expired on September 30, including nurses, radiologists, X-ray technicians, clinical lab technicians, optometrists and even housekeepers.
A coalition of labor unions notified Kaiser earlier this week that he could strike again next month if he doesn’t reach a deal by Oct. 31, when Seattle employees’ contracts expire.
Last week, strike lines were set up at Kaiser Permanente hospital and clinic buildings across the country, including in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The union said in a statement that it is protesting unfair labor practices and Kaiser executives’ “failure to negotiate in good faith over unsafe staffing and outsourcing of protection at hundreds of Kaiser hospitals and facilities across the country.”
The health care system announced on October 1 that it had presented a “strengthening proposal” to the union, including a full wage increase and an increase in the minimum wage.
The company announced that it has already reached an agreement with a federation of labor unions to hire 10,000 new employees by the end of October.
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