PORTLAND, Ore. — Kaiser Permanente reached a breakthrough Friday in negotiations with 75,000 workers who staged a three-day strike across multiple states last week, but the tentative deal doesn't cover a separate group of pharmacy technicians in Oregon and Southwest Washington who have been staging their own strike for two weeks — and plan to keep it going.
United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 555, which represents local Kaiser pharmacy and imaging staff, said in a news release Saturday that Kaiser presented an "insulting, out-of-touch proposal" when its bargaining team met with the union on Wednesday and Thursday. The union said the company offered a 3% wage increase for each year of the new contract, while the union team is seeking a 43% increase across four years.
"As Pharmacy Technicians and Clerks have been out on the picket line on a ULP strike, we have heard of prescription mix-ups, worker burnout, and patients waiting hours to get to the counter just to be told that their medication is out of stock. Kaiser Permanente should never have let it get this far, and needs to get real at the bargaining table, recognize the critical work their employees do, and come up with an offer that keeps these knowledgeable, hard-working professionals with Kaiser," said UFCW Local 555 president Dan Clay in a statement.
In a statement on Saturday, Kaiser told KGW that bargaining with the union would continue on Monday and said the company is "committed to bargaining in good faith with the goal of reaching an agreement that strengthens our position as the best place to work and ensures the high-quality care our members expect from us remains affordable and easy to access."
The local Kaiser pharmacy workers began their planned 21-day strike on Oct. 1, billing it as a protest against unfair labor practices by Kaiser. A spokesperson for the local union told KGW at the start of the strike that the local workers broke away from the broader union coalition behind last week's three-day strike because they felt they could better meet the bargaining needs for pharmacy and imaging workers if they were independent.
The union claimed in the Saturday news release that the strike has forced Kaiser to close multiple pharmacy locations due to staffing issues. It also said an additional four-week pharmacy strike is planned to begin Oct. 23, two days after the scheduled end of the current strike, unless a deal is reached.
Imaging workers have not yet joined the strike because they're on a separate contract that hasn't expired yet, the union said, but that contract expires Nov. 1 and the imaging workers would be able to take action after that.
