“You’re Overpaid!” is Kaiser’s post-pandemic message to healthcare workers
SEIU NATIONAL BARGAINING UPDATE
At bargaining this week, the “non-profit” that pays its CEO $16 million a year gave a clear message to the EVS worker raising a family on $48,000 a year: “You make too much money.”
It’s unbelievable. Kaiser pays 49 executives more than a million dollars a year, but they think a Phlebotomist earning $48,000 a year in Portland is making Kaiser unaffordable. The corporation that has over $113 billion in investments – including questionable ventures around the world – believes they are paying healthcare workers $450 million a year too much in wages that are “over market.”
We will be submitting a full economic proposal – including wages – at our next bargaining session on August 1, but the fault lines in negotiations are becoming more and more clear: our Coalition spoke about how we are falling behind, struggling to afford living where we work, and losing ground to rising costs. Kaiser spoke about outsourcing more of our work to to low wage, for-profit companies – undermining middle class jobs.
Why Can’t Kaiser See Our Value?
What’s good for us is good for Kaiser – but for some reason they can’t seem to see that.
We want Kaiser to grow as a union company with leading wages, benefits and quality care.
Instead, Kaiser is spending $5 billion of our patients’ premiums to launch a non-union, non-partnership company that will lower labor standards.
We want a guaranteed PSP payout we can count on when we reach our goals.
Kaiser is still defending their shameful decision to deny frontline caregivers our PSP while paying big bonuses to managers.
We want Kaiser to make meaningful investments in solving the staffing shortage: increase training funds, eliminate barriers to promotion, justify unposted vacancies, create paid externships, raise shift differentials that haven’t gone up in decades, provide referral/retention and recruitment bonuses, and dial back wasteful registry spending.
Kaiser’s response is to make things worse.
Kaiser wants to:
Make it easier to outsource our jobs.
Lengthen periods to fire workers without cause.
Deny us a voice in changes to our job descriptions.
Give them the right to stop our work from home without any process or adequate notice.
Eliminate the right to return after a transfer.
Limit our ability to transfer.
Limit the rights of our stewards to advocate for us.
Take away our right to engage in sympathy strikes.
SEIU REGIONAL BARGAINING UPDATE
Once again the Kaiser management was not prepared for our bargaining session, despite three weeks to prepare. When they did arrive at the table, almost 2 hours late, they presented a package that had to be accepted in its totality.
The minimal movement they made on financial issues like shift differentials was not enough to even consider the concessions they were demanding of us, such as:
Eroding our rights to a voice in our job descriptions,
Decrease 31 day right of return down to 14 days,
An unclear replacement pool that expands geographic areas and appears to be a plan to change core staff positions into these unstable replacement pool positions,
… and so much more.
What was even more disappointing was that they had a new proposal to take away the very small differential that 12 hour employees currently receive and NO RESPONSE or acknowledgement of our proposals around longevity and increased anniversary steps.
We have survived a global pandemic and we have seen CEO and executive pay rise while they pay agency staff hand-over-fist. It’s time for management to step up and show up (on time). It’s time they arrrive at the table ready to respect us and build on our current contract.
If it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now:
We have a fight on our hands and Kaiser thinks we’re bluffing. Luckily for us, we’re not.
So Many Strike Captains!
On July 8, hundreds of us came together to begin our training as Strike Captains. We discussed how to best communicate and share information so that everyone understands what’s happening and why. And this is just the beginning. We’ll be continuing to meet and train and get better in the coming months.
It’s Time to Picket!
It’s clear that the only way that we will get Kaiser to listen to us is to make some noise.
We will be picketing in front of Kaiser Westside, Interstate and Sunnyside along with Kaiser members across the country during the week of 7/24-7/29.
Sign up for your picket today for our pickets on July 24, 26, and 28 – the more of us that are out on the line, the better our chances to get the contract we deserve!
This is your contract,
and your voice matters!
Sign up for July Info Pickets! Let’s show Kaiser management how fired up we are about staffing and pay by having some big rallies at our worksites. Informational pickets are a way to show our support for our union proposals and each other. Bring your co-workers, family, and friends and join us in July. Sign up here to attend!
Continue to purple up on Tuesdays and Thursdays as a show of solidarity!
Download a virtual background and signature image to show your digital solidarity!
If you have any questions, talk to a Kaiser Bargaining Team member or contact Contract Specialist by emailing KaiserMRC@seiu49.org or calling/texting 503-782-6228.
