Nurses, medical technicians, and other support personnel at hundreds of Kaiser hospitals have taken to picket lines since Wednesday morning.
Still, the strike pushed Kaiser to the forefront of growing labour unrest in the healthcare industry – and across the US economy – driven by the erosion of workers’ earning power due to inflation and pandemic-related disruptions in the labour force. Both sides expressed a readiness to return to the bargaining table, but as of late Thursday there was no word that talks had resumed or that more negotiations had been scheduled.
Short staffing and high turnover were among the final stumbling blocks to be settled at the bargaining table, as were union demands for safeguarding employees from an “outsourcing” of their jobs to vendors and third-party contractors.