Picketing began Wednesday morning at Kaiser Permanente hospitals as some 75,000 health care workers go on strike
in Virginia, California and three other states over wages and staffing shortages, marking the latest major labor unrest in the United States.
The strikers include licensed vocational nurses, home health aides and ultrasound sonographers, as well as technicians in radiology, X-ray, surgical, pharmacy and emergency departments. Wednesday's strike is the latest one for the health care industry this year as it continues to confront burnout with the heavy workloads - problems that were exacerbated greatly by the pandemic.
"They're not listening to the frontline health care workers," said Mikki Fletchall, a licensed vocational nurse based in a Kaiser medical office in Camarillo, California. "We're striking because of our patients. We don't want to have to do it, but we will do it."Since 2022, the hospital system has hired 51,000 workers and has plans to add 10,000 more people by the end of the month.
"Our focus, for the dollars that we bring in, are to keep them invested in value-based care," said Gaskill-Hames, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals of Southern California and Hawaii.
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