Last year’s so-called “Striketober” phenomenon made plenty of headlines for obvious reasons, including widespread worker frustration with pandemic-related conditions and ongoing economic stressors. Yet media coverage amplified and over-politicized the issue with the reality being that strikes remain relatively rare in most industries.
However, the healthcare industry stood out as (and remains) an exception with workers heading to the picket lines to a consistently frequent degree (and some strikes lasting hundreds of days). Staffing shortages, budget shortfalls, and spiking workplace violence all provide fodder for unions to strike while the striking iron is hot.
It’s no wonder, then, that contract renewal negotiations continue to stall out between healthcare employers and unions across the U.S., which translates into workers landing in Strike City. That’s not a place that any employer wants to see its workers visit (let alone on an extended basis), but that is where we’re going in this healthcare roundup:
- Kaiser Permanente (one of the largest healthcare employers in the U.S) still finds itself plagued by worker rallies. Last November, a total of 32,000 Kaiser workers plucked up picket signs, and the trend continues this week in Northern California with over 2,000 mental health therapists waging an open-ended strike after a year of stalled contract negotiations. These workers argue that they’re stretched to the limits (one clinician allotted for every 2,600 Kaiser members) with this strike causing Kaiser to cancel countless mental health appointments.
- The Minnesota Nurses Association will soon send 15,000 nurses to the picket lines after voting this week due to failed contract negotiations. This could wage one of U.S. history’s biggest nursing strikes after the union declared “a crisis of retention and care.” In related news, healthcare workers count as an overriding reason why union membership in Minnesota (which includes the SEIU’s newly acquired Planned Parenthood workers) currently sits at a 14-year high.
- SEIU locals continue to advance in their ongoing tactics upon nursing homes. In Pennsylvania, union workers at 39 nursing homes are threatening to strike due to staff cuts and stressful working conditions. And in Connecticut, 25 nursing homes may soon cope with striking workers as they push for increased wages while also asking for the state to intervene with mandated pay raises.
In healthcare union news that is not directly related to strikes, the City of Los Angeles intends to enact a Healthcare Workers Minimum Wage Ordinance, which will bump up private healthcare workers to $25 per hour (or more). This move follows the SEIU’s push to make the issue a ballot initiative, which the Los Angeles City Council decided was not necessary to implement the increases citywide. Stay tuned for potential follow-up developments, not only in California but far and wide.
