Kaiser employees in San Diego prepare to strike
UPDATE (9:09 AM): Kaiser employees across California have begun the three-day strike Wednesday morning.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (NBC, KYMA/KECY) - Thousands of San Diego Kaiser employees are preparing to strike Wednesday morning.
Kaiser hospital employees loading bags and boxes of union shirts and pickets signs, as they prepare to start their three-day strike Wednesday morning.
"We need Kaiser executives to recognize that they've got a crisis on hand and that we need to staff these facilities to care for these patients," said Michael Ramey, President of OPEIU Local 30 Union.
In his 27 years as a San Diego ultrasound tech, and as the current union president, Ramey says staffing issues, exacerbated by a pandemic exodus, is leading to patient care concerns.
"They'll say to me, it took me this long to get this appointment, and then I have to tell them it's going to take this much longer for that patient to get the results from that appointment. And then if there's anything that needs to be done based on those results, the patient's going to wait that much longer for the care that they need," Ramey explained.
Premier employees = Premier pay employer
Kaiser said it's hired 22,000 people so far this year. They also said more than 98,000 of those hires are union represented jobs, putting them on track to meet Kaiser's and the unions' agreed upon goal of 10,000 union hires by this month, ahead of their end of the year goal.
Kaiser is also offering across the board salary increases of 12.5-to-16% over four years, as well as raising minimum wage for California employees to $23.00 an hour, though that still falls short of the national average of $33.00 for health services workers, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
"In order for us to be the premier employee, we have to have a premier pay employer as well," said Ezekiel Diaz, a Kaiser employee.
"We're seeing our coworkers be burned out. We're seeing the patient workload be excessive," Ramey further added.
High quality care
They say not only to improve their working conditions, but to ensure high quality care.
"We want to make sure that patient care over profit, it's what what's being put out there," Diaz shared.
"Some people will say, 'Well, how can you be out here picketing when there's a patient up there in that hospital room that need your attention or your care?' And the thing is that patient hasn't been receiving the attention and care that they've deserved for years," Ramey expressed.
