Why 31,000 Kaiser Permanente Workers Are Striking — Again

Roughly 31,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses and other healthcare professionals are planning to launch an open-ended strike starting on Monday.

Their main grievances are chronic understaffing, rising workloads and concerns that Kaiser’s wage and contract proposals fail to address cost-of-living pressures.

The workers going on strike are represented mainly by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP). Their strike will affect  20 hospitals and 200 clinics across California and Hawaii.

Kaiser said it plans for its facilities to stay open but is warning of disruptions, rescheduled appointments and possible pharmacy closures.

This week, the health system released a statement saying national labor negotiations have stalled despite what it called significant progress and a “historic” wage proposal, blaming unions for bad-faith tactics and disruptions to the bargaining process. 

Kaiser stated that shifting unresolved issues to local negotiations is the most practical way to reach agreements on pay and benefits.

The unions frame the strike as a patient safety and workforce retention crisis, not just a pay fight. They argue that low staffing levels and mounting administrative pressures are already delaying care — forcing clinicians to cut back services and, in some cases, leave the organization altogether. 

One union member — Cameron Cook, a nurse anesthetist at Kaiser’s hospital in Redwood City, California — noted that Kaiser has not negotiated in good faith and has tried to portray union workers as greedy while avoiding serious bargaining. 

He said clinicians are not seeking major financial gains but are fighting to preserve existing benefits and protections that Kaiser is now trying to roll back, despite claims of generous wage increases.

“While Kaiser does push this idea that they’re offering a very generous wage increase, they’re hiding the fact that they’re actually trying to cut a lot of our benefits and retirement and healthcare, as well as our ability to control our own scheduling,” Cook declared.

He also pointed out that the dispute is a patient care issue and highlighted how staffing shortages lead to delayed appointments, canceled surgeries and poor communication.

He has witnessed these problems as both as a provider and as a patient family member. 

“I have a child who has a permanent disability, so we are constantly going to Kaiser. I see what the patients face on that end, in terms of delayed or canceled appointments, and the inability to get a response or talk to a human. She recently had a major surgery, and we were never able to get in for her three-month follow up. We eventually just had to stop trying because no one would get back to us,” Cook stated.

Ultimately, he thinks workers still believe in Kaiser’s mission but worry the organization is drifting toward corporate priorities at the expense of patients and frontline staff. 

He warned that if Kaiser continues down its current path, the gap between its stated values and day-to-day realities for patients and clinicians will only widen.

“We do like Kaiser. We believe in Kaiser. I think in terms of healthcare in the U.S., Kaiser’s model is to be admired — but we are starting to see corporate interests creep in, and frankly, they’re losing their way. We want to see Kaiser invest in patient care and the providers who provide that care,” Cook remarked.

This type of labor dispute is nothing new for Kaiser. This same group of 31,000 workers went on strike as recently as October, when they walked out for five days over concerns related to staffing, wages and patient care.

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