Unionists Picket Kaiser Walnut Creek in One-Day Strike

Chanting "Kaiser, Kaiser, get a clue — what the heck is wrong with you?", the pickets were out in numbers at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Walnut Creek for a one-day strike Thursday.

At noontime, some 150 red-T-shirted pickets were out on the sidewalk in front of the hospital on South Main Street. They represented the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the more numerous and politically powerful California Nurses Association.

The pickets carried signs such as "Some cuts don't heal" and "Short Staffing = compromised patient care."

With Kaiser seeking cutbacks in salary, retirement and health benefits, said NUHW member Herb Klar, it reflects a change in management style over the last several years to emphasize cost-cutting while more money goes into management salaries. Before that, Klar felt, "Kaiser had a tradition of aggressively collaborative relations with labor."

Klar, for 16 years a Kaiser employee, is a social worker and member of the bargaining committee for the union.

Kaiser has been critical of NUHW for calling a strike at an early stage of negotiations.

"We were well prepared for this event and fully staffed," said Deniene Erickson, a Kaiser media relations specialist.

Also, Kaiser has assured patients and the public that work stoppages should not affect the care you receive.
around California. While nurses walked out in sympathy of the NUHW one-day strike at Kaiser facilities around the state, other groups of nurses were striking at Sutter facilities in different cities.

NUHW is a relatively new, breakaway union. Thursday's action against Kaiser was its first major action in Northern California, said Dr. Adam Front, a NUHW steward in Walnut Creek. He added it was the first statewide labor action ever against Kaiser.
 
The unionists let others cross the picket line without confrontations, said Front, who is a psychologist at Kaiser's psychology and chemical dependency clinic in Walnut Creek.

In days leading up to the one-day strike, Front said, management intimidated service and technical workers at the Walnut Creek hospital who wanted to join NUHW and the California Nurses Association on the picket line. NUHW intends to file with federal authorities unfair labor practices charges because of that intimidation, Front said.

"We respect the rights of our employees to engage in lawful union activity or to refrain from that activity, and we have strict policies in place to protect those rights," said Erickson.

Kaiser's "bad-faith bargaining" has drawn out more union members to participate in more activities such as Thursday's picketing, Front said.

Recent changes have taken resources away from psychiatric care, Klar said. Some patients are being siphoned into groups as replacement for therapy with an individual therapist, he said.

NUHW represents psychologists, social workers, optical workers, health educators, dietitians and other hospital professionals.

The pickets drew whoops and honks from passing motorists. They were loud enough to interrupt a Spanish honors class down Main Street at Las Lomas High School, where teacher Mallorie Wilkerson seized the teaching moment and taught the class the word for horn, claxon.