National Bargaining Kicks Off in Oakland

Your IFPTE Local 20 national bargaining team members are feeling “cautiously optimistic” coming out of the first round of bargaining. Kaiser heard us multiple times regarding the difficulties in retaining healthcare professionals. They acknowledged the struggle of filling our classifications. We feel seen and heard coming out of our first session.

This is, no doubt, in large part thanks to your participation in multiple Coalition actions, each one bigger or stronger than the last,  in support of better staffing, higher wages, benefits, and stronger Partnership!

Of course, the campaign has just begun and we have a long road of bargaining ahead of us. We need all the support we can get from our membership on the ground to accompany our efforts at the bargaining table. We need you to continue to stand behind your bargaining team no matter what is to come.

Meet your ESC Local 20 Kaiser National Bargaining team!

From left to right: Connie Savoy, CLS; Kathleen Doerr, HHT; Sandra Prado-Nava, CLS; Joan Mah, OPT; Francisco Preciado, ESC Executive Director; and Debbie Deveno (not pictured here).

Our first challenge to Kaiser: Hire 10,000 new workers

The biggest issue we have to solve at Kaiser is the chronic understaffing we face in our facilities. And Kaiser knows it too! They shared some eye-popping statistics with us:

  • 11.1% of all Coalition positions are vacant
  • The average vacancy takes 80 days to fill (and that’s just the average – we know it sometimes takes more than six months!)

Given the urgency of the staffing crisis, we presented a challenge to management: let’s commit to an increase of 10,000 new Kaiser employees into Coalition positions by the end of 2023. And they said yes! To accomplish this, a small national working team of Kaiser and Coalition members will be mobilized to focus on:

  • Reducing the use of expensive contractors
  • Reducing the overall time it takes to fill vacancies
  • Removing structural barriers to hiring
  • Finding inefficiencies in the hiring process

This group will report back at the next bargaining session on May 16.

Staffing was a struggle before the pandemic, and now it has become a full-blown crisis. Learn more about how it is affecting our patients and us as healthcare workers.

Joan Mah from IFPTE Local 20 reported on “Crisis in Care” during bargaining. Read the report below for more information.

We are United For All!