Dive Brief:
- A thousand nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center are planning to strike for one day on Thursday, June 23 as they negotiate new contracts with the hospital, according to a release from the California Nurses Association, which represents the nurses.
- The hospital and nurses have been in negotiations since September 2021. The nurses want provisions in new contracts that ensure they have adequate supplies and enough ancillary staff, according to the release.
- In a statement from Kaiser, the system said it employs and has contracts with over 160,000 union-represented employees, and contingency plans are in place to ensure the hospital remains operational if the strike goes forward.
Dive Insight:
Kaiser Permanente nurses in Los Angeles join other healthcare workers in the state that have recently threatened to go on strike amid tense contract negotiations and staffing challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
In April about 5,000 nurses at two Stanford hospitals in Northern California went on strike, along with 8,000 Sutter nurses at 15 hospitals.
In May, hundreds of certified nursing assistants, technicians, environmental service and food service workers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles waged a five-day strike.
Physician residents and interns at Los Angeles County Hospitals threatened to strike, though they reached a deal with the system on June 5 before the planned work stoppage.
It comes as hospitals grapple with nationwide staffing shortages more than two years into the coronavirus pandemic. As more contracts come up for expiration, healthcare staff are emboldened to demand provisions they say will better their working conditions.
Nurses at Kaiser’s LAMC are demanding measures they say will improve staffing conditions, namely those allowing for nurses to take adequate meal and rest breaks with the addition of more ancillary staff.
Nurses are often unable to take meal breaks during their 12 and a half hour shifts because no other nurses are available to relieve them, the union said in the release.
A lack of adequate supplies is another concern nurses want addressed. Shortages of syringes and other tools to start IVs take nurses away from patient bedsides to find essential supplies, the union said.
More ancillary staff could help assist nurses with those issues, the union said.
Last year, as many as 28,400 Kaiser employees across Southern California threatened to strike while negotiating new contracts.
That strike was averted when the two sides reached an agreement just before the planned work stoppage, though it had the potential to significantly disrupt operations at the system's 14 hospitals and more than 200 clinics in that area.