Following the failure to achieve a new contract agreement, the walkout by more than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare employees has started.
This is the largest healthcare walkout in U.S. history.
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The conflict is around what the coalition claims is a significant staffing shortfall that endangers Kaiser employees, patients, and workers.
Nurses, orderlies, radiology and lab technicians, respiratory therapists, and housekeepers are among those employed. With 13 million customers, the firm is the largest managed care organization in the United States.
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What Is The History Behind The Demands?
Union workers want Kaiser to enhance staffing numbers, which have deteriorated owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to meet their salary and benefit concerns. According to a Kaiser press statement, the walkout would also protest unfair labour practices and address the issue of personnel shortages.
According to a 2022 report from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), 83 percent of healthcare workers cited severe or moderate understaffing in their departments.
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Furthermore, 74% said they needed more time to give good patient care on a regular basis, and 46% acknowledged frequently or infrequently skipping breaks or meals.
“People are overworked, and people are not able to give patients what they deserve,” a Kaiser Permanente customer service employee told China Media Group.
When Did The Last Negotiation Took Place?
Kaiser and the alliance last negotiated a contract in 2019, a year before healthcare workers were forced to labour under terrible conditions on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite public adulation during the epidemic, a more problematic reality existed, including enormous patient surges, overwhelming workloads, threats to both healthcare professionals and their families, and an unparalleled level of physical fatigue, according to SEIU-UHW research.
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“Workers are really being squeezed right now,” said Renee Saldana, a spokesman for SEIU-UHW, adding that they had to deal with the worst global health crisis in a generation, as well as rent and housing insecurity.
Nurses Are Under Strain
Nurses are also under increasing strain. A poll of registered nurses in 2023 investigates how COVID-19 has influenced their career choices and job satisfaction.
Thirty percent of the more than 18,000 nurses polled said the epidemic would force them to leave their jobs. Only 15% intend to stay in their current positions in the future year, with the remaining 85% seeking other nursing job prospects.
What Was The Burnout Among European Healthcare Workers?
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Similarly, despite their efforts and long hours spent away from home during the pandemic, healthcare workers in Europe have faced difficult conditions in terms of pay and working conditions.
In 2022, doctors in numerous European nations, including France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Turkey, protested for higher wages and solutions to hospital staffing shortages.
When Will This Strike End?
Strikes will continue until 2023. Doctors at municipal hospitals in Germany went on strike in March, demanding compensation for inflation since the last wage boost in autumn 2021, as well as a 2.5 percent pay increase for the 55,000 hospital doctors.
Which Round Of Strikes Has Started In UK?
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In the United Kingdom, junior physicians, who account for 45 percent of all doctors in the National Health Service (NHS), began their 5th round of strike action in August.
Thousands of these doctors took part in picket lines immediately after starting their initial jobs with the NHS. This comes after a string of nurses’ strikes in December 2022 and early this year.
According to the British Medical Association (BMA), newly certified doctors make less than a barista at the coffee shop chain Pret-a-Manger, and their salary has decreased by 26 percent in real terms since 2008.
For the first time in the NHS’s 75-year history, both consultants and junior physicians went on strike at the same time in September, protesting salary proposals that fell below inflation and gruelling workloads.
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Shane Delamont, a neurology consultant, said he never considered striking and that the decision was “built up over a number of years.” He told the BMA that the persistent pressures on NHS funding, which began with the David Cameron-led government’s austerity policies, had set the ground for the strike.
Despite their heroic efforts during the pandemic, doctors, he added, were getting increasingly unhappy with the government’s chronically inadequate support.
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