Strike by 75,000 Kaiser Permanente staff enters 3rd day

[superadmin]

LOS ANGELES: Some 75,000 unionised healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente, one of the top US medical employers, entered the third day of a planned 72-hour strike on Friday, as contract talks focusing on staffing shortages and pay appeared to remain in a stalemate.

Nurses, medical technicians, and other support personnel at hundreds of Kaiser hospitals and clinics in California, Oregon, Washington state, Colorado, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, took to picket lines on Wednesday morning in the largest strike ever in the US healthcare sector.

Kaiser, has said its hospitals and emergency departments have remained open despite the walkout, staffed by doctors, managers, and “contingency workers.”

Still, the strike pushed Kaiser to the forefront of growing labour unrest in the healthcare industry – and across the US economy – driven by the erosion of workers’ earning power due to inflation and pandemic-related disruptions in the labour force.

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