HUNDREDS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Kaiser Permanente nurses staged a one-day strike over contract talks and concerns about staffing levels.
More than 600 nurse midwives and nurse anesthetists from 20 hospitals took to the picket lines Monday at Kaiser facilities in Oakland and Roseville at 7 a.m., according to officials with the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals.
The nurses, who are negotiating their first union contract with the health care system, said in a news release that Kaiser has “refused to settle a fair contract that addresses unsafe staffing, burnout, and the risk to patient care.”
“When you don’t pay wages that are appropriate for advanced practice providers, you cannot recruit and retain the best nurse midwives out there,” said Emily Hardy, a certified nurse midwife at Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Medical Center.
“So people leave because they can’t afford to live here. They leave because they get better offers with other health care systems and then here’s what happens — patients and members don’t have nurse midwives, cesarean birth rates go up, patient satisfaction goes down, interventions go up, pre-term birth rates go up,” Hardy said.
Jeff Cathcart, a Kaiser nurse in San Francisco, said access to care is being impacted.
“We’ve had operating rooms sit empty because there weren’t enough nurse anesthetists to cover cases,” Cathcart said.
Joining the nurses Monday in a sympathy strike are physician assistants and acupuncture providers from UNAC/UHCP’s Northern California chapters.
Kaiser officials said together the strikers account for 1,300 health care workers throughout the region.
And while hospitals and medical offices remain open some surgeries and other appointments might have to be rescheduled because of the walkout, Kaiser officials said Monday.
“It is disappointing that leadership of a partner union would ask our dedicated and committed employees to walk away from the patients who need them, and disrupt needed health care for our members, while we are actively working to settle a contract,” Kaiser officials said.
Hospital officials dispute the union’s claim that staffing levels threaten patient care, saying that Kaiser meets and often exceeds state mandates on nurse-to-patient ratios and workforce standards.
Kaiser and the Alliance of Health Care Unions have been in talks since May over a national agreement that expires at the end of September and the two sides will meet multiple times before then in an effort to reach a new agreement.
If talks are successful, this will be the first union contract for the nurse midwives since they joined UNAC/UHCP in 2024 and for the nurse anesthetists since they joined in 2023.
“We want members to know that this is not our first choice. It’s not our second choice. We don’t want to be striking,” Hardy said. “It’s such a difficult decision, but we’re doing it for you because without our voices being heard, midwifery access goes away, birth outcomes, maternal health outcomes suffer. And we’re here standing up to Kaiser for you.”
The strikers wrapped up their picket line at the Oakland Kaiser Medical Center at Broadway and MacArthur Boulevard by 7 p.m.
