(LifeSiteNews) — Healthcare company Kaiser Permanente is currently facing a 75,000-worker strike, as union leaders seek higher pay and more hiring to address a staffing shortage.
“Employees on the picket lines include nursing staff, dietary workers, receptionists, optometrists, and pharmacists,” according to CNN. Workers walked off the job in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California, though employees in Virginia and Washington, D.C., also went on strike for a day.
“Frontline healthcare workers are awaiting a meaningful response from Kaiser executives regarding some of our key priorities including safe staffing, outsourcing protections for incumbent healthcare workers, and fair wages to reduce turnover,” a spokesman for the unions said last night.
A search of Kaiser’s job database shows it is looking to hire at least 2,400 nurses and over 240 pharmacists and pharmacy techs.
But one reason the healthcare system might have a staffing shortage is because it mandated that all employees receive the COVID-19 jabs, boasting at the time that it was one of the first medical organizations to do so.
On August 2, 2021, the company “announced it will make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for all its employees and physicians,” claiming that “[m]aking vaccination mandatory is the most effective way we can protect our people, our patients, and the communities we serve.”
The company also pushed the questionable claim that “[l]arge groups of unvaccinated people [were] fueling the current increase in cases.”
It suspended over 2,000 of its workers in October 2021 for their refusal to take the abortion jabs. It ended up firing workers who refused.
On January 14, 2022, after the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s vaccine mandate, Kaiser wrote that jabs are “the most powerful tool we have to end the COVID-19 pandemic, to prevent more dangerous strains from developing, and to begin to restore our safety and normalcy.”
This comment came despite ample evidence at the time that the COVID shot did not reduce infections or transmission and had significant problems.
The union opposed the mandate because it had not been negotiated into their contracts, though it shared that many of its workers had received the jab.
“As of early August, 77.8% of Kaiser employees have been vaccinated against COVID-19,” the union stated in August 2021. “However, we fully expect Kaiser to bargain with us over any changes to our working conditions, including a COVID-19 vaccination mandate.”
The strike will end this week but could begin again next month. “The work stoppage is set to end early Saturday morning, but the coalition said it is planning a longer strike in November if a new employment contract is not negotiated by then,” CNN reported.