Victory to the Kaiser Local 39 Strike!
Kaiser Oakland September 27, photo by CWG
As we go to press, Kaiser has reached a tentative agreement (still to be ratified by the membership) with several unions, however Local 39, the engineers, are still fighting.
“Kaiser Permanente has averted strikes in Southern California, Oregon and Hawaii after reaching a tentative four-year contract with 50,000 employees, but its Northern California operations will still face mass walkouts over stalled talks with 700 engineers.” – Sacramento Bee
Pickets are up at 24 Kaiser Permanente Hospitals in Northern California. More to follow!
“Roughly 750 Kaiser Permanente workers in Northern California responsible for maintaining key medical and other facility equipment have walked off the job, demanding higher pay and better working conditions.” (San Mateo Daily Journal)
The union, Local 39 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, asserts that Kaiser has refused to negotiate in good faith. After months of negotiations the contract expired on September 17, 2021. Kaiser made a low ball offer which the union members voted down.
When we first visited the picket line workers had been out for 10 days. Scabs and managers were working inside, having replaced the stationary engineers. Now, nearly two months later, Kaiser management’s obstinacy has provoked a much larger confrontation across their massive organization.
“And about 32,000 Kaiser employees in Southern California, Oregon and Washington are also planning to strike starting on November 15. This strike, including registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and others, is completely separate from the Guild’s strike.” (These are the Guild of Professional Pharmacists–ed.)
The pickets at the entrance to the loading docks are “disruptive but not designed to shut the hospitals down,” explained one picket. We observed that nurses and other workers have been entering the hospitals freely without directly having to cross picket lines. Teamsters refuse to cross the line, slowing down to take pictures to show their bosses why they return with a full load. Deliveries to the loading docks are disrupted and Kaiser is likely making other arrangements which the picketers are not taking action to stop.
Supporting the strikers have been visits by individual trade unionists including Kaiser nurses, transit workers and perfunctory visits by representatives of the Labor councils and State Labor federation. There does not appear to be any discussion about how to win a strike at a hospital with a solid shut down. We ask workers WHY?! What’s wrong with WINNING?
The labor bureaucracy has no intention to shut down the hospital and force negotiations. Like the nurses who periodically strike, and whose contract is also up, Local 39 has no militant leadership willing to break with the Democrats and initiate effective strikes with pickets that shut facilities down.
Historically nurses strikes in the Bay Area at Sutter and Kaiser regularly let scab nurses cross the lines or enter via entrances without pickets. The pressure on Kaiser is clearly minimal when managers and scabs keep the facility limping along.
It is the viewpoint of the CWG that militant unions can win and win quickly by shutting down facilities tight. The opportunity that presents when multiple union contracts end at the same time provides opportunity to force rapid settlement; but the go-along to get along pie-cards prefer a choreographed display designed to make the workers pay for any gains with weeks out on the line.
Nurses contracts expire this week as well. The Kaiser proposal of a 1 percent increase followed by two 3% increases is not considered serious by any of the unions involved in the multi-union coalitions. The coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (CKPU) has been asking for 4% per year for the three year contract.
Those who observe the predictions around inflation see this 4% as generous offer on the part of the unions considering business commentators and even the FED kick around numbers between 4-6% in the short term and their long term crystal balls are all clouded by the uncharted waters and ineffective monetary policy during the terminal capitalist decay and the COVID related breakdowns in production and distribution.
The CKPU was organized because Kaiser Permanente is a statewide institution; the bargaining units are broken up into multiple unions and bargaining units. Workers are isolated from mutual inter-union action and solidarity between unions and between Nor-Cal and So-Cal. If used as a democratic strike organizing committee the CKPU has the potential to unite all the workers in a united strike that wins. But that depends on the membership taking control of the strike.
As Kaiser is known to be stubborn it is not unlikely that nurses and others will be on pickets alongside Stationary engineers by November 15 & 19th. A United Nurses Associations of California report that the RN’s are intent on putting the brakes on their long term partnership with management, claiming management walked away from negotiations first. We will see what that means in the way of action in the next week or so.
While the stationary engineers did not have current COVID-19 health and safety concerns, they suggest the nurses are still not satisfied with Kaiser’s response to the pandemic despite a negotiated settlement between Kaiser and Cal/OSHA. Cal/OSHA and Kaiser went to hearings and co-joined dozens of inspections at multiple facilities across the state into one settlement package based on management accepting and acting on the understanding that the virus is airborne transmissible, requiring a higher level of personal protective equipment and isolation than was provided for in the first 16 months of the pandemic.
Since the above paragraphs were written there have been rank and file solidarity mobilizations at the picket lines bringing trade union support from across the Labor Councils. Yet Kaiser is holding out because it is being used as the bosses vanguard in the fight to drive down wages and conditions in the entire industry.
TO WIN, MAKE THE STRIKE CLASS WIDE, MOVE THE GOAL POST!
The bosses have already provoked the expansion of the strike and shown us that they are willing to risk the health and safety of staff and patients alike. The Kaiser clients (members) are the natural allies of the strike. If only we make the link in their minds and build the alliance we can get Kaiser to cave overnight!
Kaiser has 40% of the market. They dominate the market and lead it. The rest of the industry is pegged to the standards they set. We saw how obstinate and stubborn they were in providing PPE to the staff during the first year and a half of COVID and now we see how they try to make us pay with insufficient wage offers as inflation soars. Despite being a non-profit with a 44 billion dollar reserve and a 2.2 billion dollar profit in 2020, Kaiser is demanding that workers accept a union-killing two tier system which by its very structure is discriminatory against new hires, and especially women and people of color, and they know they can hire lots of scabs with their reserves.
It is a travesty and ethical and moral breach of commitment to the member patients to use the reserves garnered by high premiums, denial of care and the “great 2020-2021 patient stay home” and fear of seeking care during COVID, as a war chest against the workers who provide the care!
We are all impacted by the climate catastrophe that triggers zoonotic disease such as COVID, environmental and structural racism and its ongoing health and safety consequences for our working class communities. We need another model food chain that feeds the hungry without breeding new diseases! Our unions must lead the fight for a planned economy to end the climate crisis and restore and remediate the mess big capital has made.
In contrast to their massive reserves we have the capacity to make this a CLASS STRUGGLE that unites all workers for decent liveable wages. Against the profit-leeches of the health care industry we demand free guaranteed medical care for all.
Against Two Tier systems, joblessness and casualization we demand jobs for all at prevailing union wages. The Unions must build Unemployed Leagues as fully chartered unions and organize the unorganized to support and join the strike.
For decades the back room deals cut between the union leadership and management ensured that strikes could be used to let off steam but not shut down facilities.
For decades the union leaderships have committed to support the very same capitalist Democratic politicians who take megabucks from the insurance, medical providers and big Pharma. It is these corporations who buy and control the politicians who our union leaders have us phone bank for every election cycle. Who do you think the politicians obey when they write legislation–clearly not us! In exchange for a moment of the politicians’ time and scrap from the table every now and again, union leaders have tied us, the union movement and the broader working class to the bosses two party system and ensured that the workers don’t get off the merry-go-round and strike out as a class for ourselves, forming a FIGHTING WORKERS LABOR PARTY!
To win we need to use CLASS STRUGGLE METHODS BOTH TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC:
- Unite the strike actions across the system! Demand joint, transparent negotiations- no back room deals–separation is the bosses advantage
- Draw the line in the sand: No two tier! Wages must slide to defeat inflation! For a 100% COLA!
- Shorten the workweek to 25 hours work for 40 hours pay!
- Demand concurrent contract expiration dates! When contracts expire together, we can strike together!
- Play hard ball to win–picket lines mean do not cross!!
- A picket that leaves one door/dock/driveway or heliport open is not a serious picket. Organize the unorganized!
- Form elected strike committees at each facility with representatives of all the unions! Initiate system wide strike coordinating meetings. Make this a community strike!
- Involve the Kaiser member/patients in the strike with mass rallies assemblies and web based meetings to build effective pickets
- To win the membership and the community to the strike raise demands for social health care the majority of people want: Provide essential care to the community in parks and union run clinics treat the homeless and uninsured to expose systemic failure!
- Spread the strike across the industry! Nationalize the Healthcare Industry, including insurance companies and big Pharma without compensation to the big shareholders and run under democratic workers/community control! Free quality health care for all as a right! Make the bosses pay!
- To apply class struggle methods, the union leadership that will not and cannot fight must be replaced because they are committed to compromise! Smash Taft-Hartley! Defy all injunctions and anti-labor laws! Build a workers’ self-defense guard to protect the strike and community from scabs, goons, racists and fascists!
- To win we must use this strike to break workers and the oppressed from the Democrats/Republicans and convene conventions of working class representatives to initiate a fighting workers labor party committed to running labor candidates, mobilizing workers’ actions in the streets to win workers power and a workers government.
- For a workers party to succeed it must become international. Workers of the World Unite! Fight for a socialist U.S. and a socialist world!
