Elected officials stand in solidarity with Kaiser workers
Support from elected officials continues to grow in Kaiser healthcare workers' fight for a new national agreement that protects patients, rebuilds our partnership, and gets Kaiser back on track. As we head toward a possible unfair labor practice strike on October 14, Oregon elected leaders have signed letters expressing their solidarity with us--the healthcare workers who make Kaiser Permanente THRIVE.Excerpt from Oregon Governor Kate Brown's letter to Ruth Williams-Brinkley, President of Kaiser Northwest:
Oregon has been and should continue to be a leader in providing safe, affordable, and accessible health care. In order to maintain our leadership role, health care providers, like Kaiser, must offer a living wage, and provide safe staffing levels, quality health care benefits, and secure retirement plans for your staff. Asking these workers to accept anything less is especially difficult to understand given the $5 billion in profits that Kaiser has made so far this year and the $35 billion the organization has in reserves.
Read the full letter here.Excerpt from Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek and House Representatives' letter to Executive Director of Community Health Dan Fields:
We were shocked to learn that Kaiser is proposing to raise health care costs, cut retirement benefits afforded to some of the current workforce for other current and future workers, and flatout refuse to discuss job security. Our desire is for the state of Oregon to be a leader with regard to safe, affordable, and accessible health care; this will not come to fruition if healthcare providers, such as Kaiser, are proposing cuts to wages, safe staffing, healthcare benefits, and retirement plans for their own low-income healthcare workers. These cuts are unacceptable given the $5 billion that Kaiser has profited thus far in 2019, not to mention the $35 billion that the organization has in reserves.