CNA represents more than 18,000 registered nurses and nurse practitioners at 87 Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics across California.
Picketing is scheduled to take place Wednesday at the following locations:
- Los Angeles Medical Center
- Modesto (Calif.) Medical Center
- Oakland (Calif.) Medical Center
- San Francisco Medical Center
- Santa Clara (Calif.) Medical Center
- South Sacramento (Calif.) Medical Center
- Vallejo (Calif.) Medical Center
CNA said key issues, according to nurses, include failure to improve staffing; failure to train additional RNs; increased cost for patients, while failing to provide top-quality care; and failure to address ongoing staffing issues and place patients in the appropriate level of care at Los Angeles Medical Center.
Kaiser officials disagreed with the union’s allegations.
“The union is alleging their contract is not being implemented properly. That is not true,” Gay Westfall, Kaiser’s senior vice president of human resources, said in an official statement, according to a Vallejo Times-Herald report. “Kaiser Permanente nurses in Northern California have an excellent contract through August 2017 in which our nurses received a robust benefits package along with commitments for training and hiring additional nursing staff.”
He added that Kaiser has already hired nearly 3,000 nurses, “bringing our total number of nurses to more than 51,000 nationwide,” and trained several hundred nurses into specialty units.
“This is substantial progress toward our overall three-year goal, and we will continue to offer training opportunities,” Mr. Westfall said, according to the report. “We continue to discuss with CNA the appropriate role for the resource nurses.”
In the meantime, Kaiser said it is taking steps to ensure any disruption from the picketing is minimal, the Vallejo Times-Herald reports.
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