Kaiser Permanente, the largest healthcare nonprofit organization in the US, and the labor unions representing 75,000 of its employees have tentatively agreed to a new contract, avoiding a second wave of record strikes over pay and staffing levels, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
In early October, unionized Kaiser Permanente employees walked off the job in a three-day work stoppage at hospitals and medical offices in five states, in what the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions described as the largest strike of healthcare workers in US history.
The strike targeted Kaiser hospitals and medical offices in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Washington state, and included employees such as vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, X-ray technicians, respiratory therapists, medical assistants, and pharmacists.
A second strike was planned for November 1.
The unions have asserted that chronic worker shortages dating back to the pandemic have created unsafe conditions for patients and caused widespread burnout.
Kaiser Permanente, though, has countered that it addressed the shortage by hiring 50,000 new workers over the last two years.
Kaiser Permanente treats nearly 13 million patients and operates 39 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices across eight states and the District of Columbia.
The company reported a second-quarter profit of $2 billion, compared with a year-ago loss of $1.2 billion, on $25 billion in revenue.
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