Kaiser patients share their experiences as strike enters fourth week

Kaiser Permanente nurses are headed into the fourth week of their open-ended strike, with pharmacy and lab technicians ratcheting up the pressure last week by forcing the health care giant to temporarily close pharmacies frequented by thousands of patients. While technicians returned to work, the main strike, declared on Jan. 26, continues.

While most health care strikes, especially those involving front-line workers such as nurses, tend to continue for a few days, perhaps a week, this work stoppage has no pre-arranged end date, leaving Kaiser members with no clear understanding of when care might return to its normal pace.

The rhetoric remains strong from both sides of this stalemate, with Kaiser insisting that the 21.5% across-the-board raise it has offered would push annual pay past $200,000 per year for many nurses. But the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, which represents more than 30,000 nurses, pharmacists, and other workers on strike, accuses Kaiser of ignoring its demands for better staffing, noting that the health care giant’s financial statements list billions of dollars in reserves.

As the weekend arrived, Kaiser Permanente San Diego reported that while its pharmacies in Escondido and Clairemont Mesa reopened on Thursday, locations in Rancho Bernardo, Carlsbad, Carmel Valley, Point Loma, Kearny Mesa and Rancho San Diego were still offline as of Friday afternoon.

Claims and counterclaims can...