UPDATE: Nurses Picket Kaiser Permanente Walnut Creek

UPDATE

Nurses are protesting a plan by "demanding severe cuts to hospital staff" that include a reduction of 50 Registered Nurse positions, according to the California Nurses Association. 

Alerting the public in a handout to "unsafe staffing that has been and continues to occur," some 100 red-shirted nurses and their supporters marched on the sidewalk in front of the hospital for three hours Tuesday morning.

The hospital issued a statement from Ginger Campbell, area manager in the Kaiser Permanente Diablo Region: "The health and well-being of our members and patients is our top priority at Kaiser Permanente."

As to the number of positions, "About 40 people would need to be reassigned," stated Deniene X. Erickson, a media relations specialist for Kaiser in an email. "Any affected nurse who wants to stay with Kaiser Permanente Northern California will have the opportunity to do so" including Kaiser facilities in Oakland and Richmond. 

The picketers Tuesday gained reinforcement from the honking of autos driving by on Newell Avenue and South Main Street. 

The picketers chanted, "Hey, Kaiser, you can't hide; we can see your greedy side."

Beckie Seitz, interim chief nurse rep for CNA at Kaiser Walnut Creek, said the issue of nurse reassignments had been the subject of two bargaining sessions in the last three weeks.

The union has a new three-year contract, settled in the spring, that will take nurses from September 2011 to September 2014. That contract includes language about layoffs that is a subject of the current bargaining.

"It isn't about money; it isn't about benefits," said Seitz. "It's about our community — the patients we serve. It's about safe care."

The bargaining includes disagreement over the number of Kaiser members, with the union now gathering data to show an "explosion" in growth, Seitz said.

Campbell said, "Over the past several years we have seen changes in patient volumes at our Walnut Creek hospital — volumes have increased in some units and decreased in others. As a result, we need to adjust our staffing levels to help ensure we continue to provide high-quality care and service to our members and patients." 

The union has documented more than 600 instances of unsafe staffing in the last year and a half, according to a CNA statement passed out in informational picketing. 

"They are just ignoring it," Seitz said. "They're sweeping it under the rug."

The reassignments are accompanied by an administration plan for a "float pool" of nurses to be deployed to different departments, which will take many nurses away from specialties where they use skills gained over years, Seitz said.

"We are in compliance with state-mandated staffing ratios, but the fact is we have too many nurses in some areas of the hospital," stated Campbell, herself an RN who also has a Ph.D. "In those areas we are often paying nurses to perform duties that are not related to patient care. At the same time, we are paying overtime for nurses in units where patient volume has increased. We simply want to make sure our nurses are working in the units where they are needed—and that they are taking care of patients."

Campbell said the administration values nurses and is "committed to bargaining in good faith."