Our statement on the Coalition’s strike

After 6 months of bargaining with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, including a marathon effort that went through Tuesday night and into Wednesday, our bargaining sessions unfortunately ended without a settlement, and the Coalition strikes began.

While we have not reached a contract settlement, we have been able to reach a number of tentative agreements in bargaining, and our offers to date address the unions’ priorities, including:

• Across-the-board wage increases in all markets over the next 4 years
• Enhanced Performance Sharing Plan with minimum payout opportunities if quality and service goals are met, and a substantial maximum payout opportunity
• Kaiser Permanente-wide minimum wages for Coalition-represented employees
• Continuing and enhancing our existing excellent health benefits and retirement income plans
• Renewing our strong tuition assistance and training programs and increasing funding of the education trusts

We remain committed to reaching a new agreement that continues to provide our employees with market-leading wages, excellent benefits, generous retirement income plans, and valuable professional development opportunities.

Together, we have faced the toughest challenges over the past 3 years. Kaiser Permanente, our industry, and our employees are now operating in a new cultural, labor, and post-pandemic environment that we are all working hard to understand. We are committed to finding workable solutions for this new environment that meet our responsibility to balance taking care of our employees and being affordable to our members.

We will coordinate with Coalition leaders to reconvene bargaining as soon as possible. We will work hard to reach an agreement so that together, we can all return to delivering on the mission of Kaiser Permanente for the benefit of our members, patients, employees, physicians, customers, and communities.

Meeting our shared staffing goal

On the same day that the Coalition strikes began, we’re pleased to confirm that we’ve met our goal of hiring 10,000 new Coalition-represented employees by year-end — and it is only October 4. We’re not done yet. We are committed to addressing every area of staffing that is still challenging.

As a reminder: In April, we agreed with the Coalition to a joint goal of hiring 10,000 people by the end of this year into jobs the Coalition cares about. We agreed this would be a great success if we could hire that many people into Coalition roles by the end of this year. We hit the goal 3 months early.

In total over the past 2 years, Kaiser Permanente has hired more than 50,000 people to join our teams.

Meeting our members’ needs

The health and well-being of our members and patients is our top priority. Because we are such a large organization with multiple ways that members can access care, the impact of the strike is different at various locations. 

We have robust plans in place to ensure members continue to receive safe, high-quality care during the strike.

All our hospitals and emergency departments remain open. Our facilities will continue to be staffed by our physicians, trained and experienced managers, and our great staff. Thousands of qualified and trained contract staff are joining our Kaiser Permanente teams this week as well, to help meet our members’ and patients’ needs. We thank those Coalition-represented employees who have chosen to come to work and care for our patients, members, and communities.

Members who need urgent or timely medical care should continue to seek it at our hospitals and medical facilities. A strike should not dissuade anyone from seeking necessary care.

We will contact members affected by any necessary changes in our services. We may need to reschedule non-emergency and elective services in some locations out of an abundance of caution. Our members can follow any important updates to our care delivery on kp.org.