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Nearly 400 strikers participated in a major action today outside Kaiser headquarters in Pasadena. The event began with a food and toy distribution at a nearby union hall before a caravan of strikers, snaking their way down , marched to Kaiser headquarters with a giant cardboard heart in tow.
Wednesday’s picket comes one year after nearly 400 workers formed a union and one month after USC shuttered the hospital’s birthing center.
The California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers has written a letter to Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg Adams calling on Kaiser to “resume good faith negotiations with NUHW’s Southern California members as soon as possible, and accept the union’s reasonable contract proposals.”
We had an extra good week in San Diego, where several workers were special guests at the Labor Council’s holiday party on Wednesday. They spoke about the strike and got several dozen participants to sign our support petition.
We had an eventful day on the picket lines, especially in Lancaster, where Kaiser security illegally walked around with a clipboard taking notes on what they saw. Strikers recorded Kaiser’s illegal surveillancing, and Kaiser’s overzealous head of security was so bothered by it that he grabbed the phone of a striker and threw it on the ground.
Between the National Association of Social Workers and the leaders of the State Senate and Assembly, a growing number of influential stakeholders are telling Kaiser it needs to settle this contract now.
This week, State Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire joined Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas in calling on Kaiser CEO Greg Adams to “agree to the union’s reasonable contract proposals.”
Week Six of our strike is off to a festive start. We had a lot of fun with our Where’s Waldo/Where’s Kaiser theme. Someone on the San Diego line even put a Greg Adams nametag on the fat cat.
With a strike by nearly 2,400 Kaiser mental health professionals in Southern California entering its second month Thursday, Kaiser therapists in Northern California will join their striking colleagues for simultaneous noontime rallies outside Kaiser corporate offices in Pasadena and Oakland.
NUHW-backed candidates fared well locally, but there will be big challenges to protect workers’ rights on the federal level.