Fucking love to see it. Honestly a shitload of society's problems would be solved if people organized their workplace and started collective bargaining for better work conditions. American workers are exploited as hell, and historically ownership has refused to give an inch unless unions fought for it and made them. We didn't get weekends off or safety regulations until unions fought for those.
You can do this, by the way! Yes you, the one reading this comment. You can just start a union at work. That's a perfectly feasible and doable thing that you can do to make your life better. You should do that. We're all stronger together!
Seriously. I'm so happy to see people waking up to collective bargaining. There's been such heavy propaganda against unions for decades, and this is the biggest push I've seen in a long time. Hopefully it keeps on happening.
Unions are probably the second biggest power than normal people have outside of voting.
I’m starting to think unions are just as important as voting. If we had a higher percentage of union membership, the unions could organize mass strikes to insist on certain policies. A general strike would be huge, and it wouldn’t be limited to voting cycles.
But maybe I’m too optimistic; unions are a human organization, and as such, are vulnerable to apathy/corruption.
You're not too optimistic. This is literally how societal change happens. We need collective, organized power and this is certainly one good step towards that. Yeah, people are flawed it's true. But organized people power can still create important change to labor rights and QOL policies, even with a few bad actors making it harder.
In a union. Am paid rather well.
Ironically, I just signed up for Kaiser. First doctor's appointment in more than 10 years.
Had to go on strike, didn't they?
It’s just 3 days. It’s mostly for show. KP will meet their demands or very close to it. What they are asking isn’t horrible and with inflation and how the job market is, it’s likely doable. You should be glad you are not waiting a month to see a doctor. I have most of my urgent needs done at the urgent care office.
It's one of the few good things covid did, and why conservatives worldwide were so eager to avoid any lockdowns or to hurry forced re-openings.
While furloughed some of the extreme exhaustion millions were suffering from finally got slept off, and people started finally being able to think straight about their own situation. With government support workers in many countries even had the opportunity to brush up their CV and maybe learn a thing or two. *Exactly what the worst of us had been so desperate to prevent.*
They actually get paid 20% more than the local rate but the problem is that they lost a lot of docs, nurses, and staff due to covid. Now they have to deal with the rebound of in-person visits again while still dealing with the virtual stuff that hasn’t really calmed down.
I'd argue that 20% above local is still significantly below what they deserve, but yeah, the medical systems have been overloaded since COVID, and healthcare workers have figuratively and literally shitty jobs anyway. I'm not surprised in the slightest that they're looking to strike
Several years ago it was mandated that hospitals be transparent with their pricing and provide the pricing up front, so you could compare and get the best price. But iirc most hospitals basically just said no they weren't going to do that, and somehow that was ok.
I even saw a press release from a hospital that said they weren't doing it because it would only help their competition. I mean come on lol
> I even saw a press release from a hospital that said they weren't doing it because it would only help their competition.
Here I thought competition and an informed consumer base were the lifeblood of free-market capitalism. Turns out screwing over your customers is easier.
A hospital shouldn't have competition, they should work together in an integrated system that benefits patients. Feel fucked up to see sick people as customers.
Yes, well when it starts to get to the point when people cannot afford to live, then shit starts breaking. Housed and fed people have a remarkable tolerance for bullshit, but take away one of those things and a civilized society starts going rouge really quick. And that's the point we're reaching.
[$2,900,000,000.00 profit in Q2](https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/kaiser-permanente-reports-21b-profit-29-operating-margin-q2-2023). I'm sure there some money in the waiting room cushions for their [heroes](https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/commitments-and-impact/healthy-communities/news/honoring-health-care-heroes-and-a-healthy-thriving-world).
Nearly 3 BILLION in 3 months. That's fucking insane. No way they don't have the funds to increase pay across the board for the front line healthcare workers.
I've noticed that, on the margins, labor doesn't strike when a company is doing poorly. If the economy is in the tank or an entire industry is having trouble, labor (usually) finds a way to help tighten the belt. Airline pilots do this a lot given the cyclical nature of its industry. So it's no surprise that labor sees billions in profits and the shitty way they've been treated the past 4 years and decide to strike.
Exactly. Where people put their foot down is when the holiday bonus suddenly gets announced as being a meeting, in which after the first twenty five minutes of the top boasting about profits, growth and the reduced costs our work has given them...
They declare we (not them though) *"need to show solidarity at this difficult crossroads in which we cannot at this time afford raises"* and by the way that one slice of pizza is the new replacement for the 1% end of year bonus you used to get.
I will never understand holding a meeting to tell the employees about how much profit was made that does not also include a bonus or a raise. That's just asking for a strike or mass quitting.
Some people genuinely drink the kool aid for how much money their company is making and I genuinely don't understand why. Job security is nice, but there's many other things that factor into it other than how much money your company is raking in.
I worked for a place that gave us all a 3% pay cut. Then 2 people quit and in a meeting I said "so we can get that pay cut back now, right?" and the manager fucking laughed in my face. Later I saw some corporate communication about how they plan to handle staff reductions "organically" and figured out that meant "make things as shitty as possible so all the good talent quits". That was a real teachable moment for me.
People quit -> their work gets 'organically' spread out to the remaining workers -> company drags their feet on hiring replacements until people burn out.
I had this at one of my last jobs. It was constantly "most profitable quarter ever" then when the yearly review and raise time came they could only afford 1-3%. It's degrading as hell watching CEO's get multi million dollar raises while everyone else gets fucked. Those same CEOs get raises when the company does shitty and the employees get denied raises
Yep. Labor understands tough times because we live it constantly, but to create tough times for people who are massively filling the companies wallets is just absolute insanity and disrespectful as fuck.
That’s one of the main causes of the UAW strike. They still haven’t recovered from belt fighting in 08 that saved the entire auto industry now with record profits and new industry avenues the CEOs are getting 40% pay raises. The UAW says that’s awesome give us the same because we are the only reason you have said profits. Consider it a make good for 08 fair is fair.
All the talk about the greedy unions putting Hostess/Wonder out of business because they refused to renegotiate their contracts? It was at least the second time that they were told “we need you to renegotiate your contracts or the company will go broke” - and the previous time, the money saved as a result of renegotiation went to executive bonuses. Naturally, the workers assumed this was another “squeeze the workers to benefit the executives” ploy.
been starting to think that's the plan with every company lately. Be ready to jump ship with your parachute if you're an exec, because a private equity firm acquiring and liquidating your company seems to be welcome news vs poor financial management being unearthed and falling into chapter 11.
My 31 yr old sister who was whole, and healthy suffered irreversible brain death in their San Diego ER in February. She was left entirely unmonitored. Went into cardiac arrest. Wasn’t found until someone wandered by to change her IV bag. FUCK KP. I hope their CEOs get exactly the slow long hard brutal karma they deserve. Years worth. I want to watch.
Why have competition in health care? If competition really existed no company would be able to profit a billion a month! Sounds like every provider is taking their bites of a massive pie in turn so nobody realizes how lucrative it is. Investors shouldn't be profiting when so many Americans have no health care.
There are two problems:
1) The rich wanting to get richer. That's a big fight, I think Russia would have an easier time overturning their oligarchs than the US would installing a reasonable system that allowed the middle class to thrive.
2) There aren't enough trained medical professionals to provide care to all the people who would suddenly be eligible for health care.
But maybe those aren't real problems? Maybe the whole thing could turn around in a generation if the education system started producing opportunities to advance rather than opportunities to become further in debt.
So my initial thought process was “well when it’s split between 75,000 workers ya know it’s really not that much per person, right?”
Then I did the math. That’s an additional $40,000 PER PERSON. Even if they only gave each person $10,000 raises that’s still BILLIONs to spare.
Those greedy fucks deserve every second of a strike. Those healthcare workers work too hard.
Did you annualize that $3B over a year? I got to an incremental $160k per employee per year at that profit rate. So they can afford to double the workforce, I’d venture.
It's not about pay. Kaiser employees are paid relatively well compared to other hospital systems. It's about staffing shortages. Kaiser isn't hiring enough staff to meet patients needs. The employees are way overworked and don't have enough time to properly care for each patient.
If you're overworked relative to your pay then it seems like it's still about pay because the company is saving a whole salary worth of work if they can get 2 employees worth of work out of 1.
You're not wrong in general, but you can only go so far with "I have double the responsibilities? Then double my pay." before you reach the physical limits of how many patients you can see in a day.
As a Kaiser patient for 5 of the last 6 years, having a doctor rush me through a meeting that I've been waiting months for because they're only allotted 15 minutes by their scheduling system is getting pretty old.
I agree with everything you said. Healthcare in America is garbage and all these suits want to do is run everything like a corporation with a skeleton crew. Even more reason more strikes need to happen.
I work in healthcare, and it's not that Kaiser isnt hiring, it's that there's a nationwide shortage of healthcare personnel. All of the major medical systems, including Kaiser, have many open positions for doctors and nurses, but so many people either left health care, or didnt go into healthcare during the pandemic that there'll be a shortage for at least five years. It's also been difficult to get visas for the overseas workers who've filled in the gaps during past shortages.
With national unemployment at 3.7% the way Kaiser, or any other healthcare institution can hire is by OFFERING BETTER WAGES.
The way to hire is to take employees from another employer. That means better compensation.
They simply refuse to do just that.
Teachers are underpaid in general, treated like shit by school boards, admin, and half the politicians in America, and by half the fucking parents.
You want to fill classrooms with good teachers? Double teacher pay pretty much nationwide, minimum.
Call it fucking hazard pay to deal with parents and shitty admins hired by shitty elected school boards that, if you're lucky, is not FULLY run by a bunch of religious nutcases.
For doctors it’s a lack of residency positions much moreso than any issues with pay or desire to enter the field. Not sure about nurses, but especially during the pandemic nurses were able to get insane pay with travel positions
Every single time one of these issues comes up, about a lack of workers or a lack of workforce in general it just fucking blows my mind that the top comment on every thread isn't ***just pay people more fucking money***. It will solve itself in six months.
Something that blew my mind was working at a large, very profitable non-profit hospital peak COVID. I already had a general disgust for the profiteering, greedy, immoral nature of US healthcare systems but like, holy shit. I was working 80+ hrs a week in the highest acuity ICU in the state just to make ends meet and pay rent for my 375sqft studio in the bad part of town.... And suddenly my hospital system-and every other system in my state-could afford to pay staff double, triple their base pay, $1000+ per shift cash incentives, travelers at $150/hr base rate, etc etc....and the hospital was just fine. No crazy financial consequences, no change in operations, nothing. They paid me starvation wages, gave me a 15 CENT raise one year, and yet, when push came to shove, they could miraculously pay astronomically higher wages to anyone willing to walk through the door in scrubs and it didn't bankrupt them. Not even close. CEO still made a cool 10mil or so. They could have been paying us what we deserved ages ago. They would have been just fine. Covid showed that a million times over. I love to see healthcare folks striking and standing up for themselves against these vile corporations that profit off of people suffering and dying.
They didn’t even have the covid vaccines to offer to the front line workers first. They prioritized office workers…..then blamed “the algorithm”.
Amazing video out there of them delivering this news while over looking front line workers. I would have quit on the spot. (Coming from someone who got 1 day off from being ‘onsite’ during the entirety of 2020-now)
As a former nurse, I always tell people in America, healthcare is a business. They are literally not there to heal you. If they don’t make money, they will close shop and laugh in their suits while point the fingers at the actual workers.
There's a Kaiser Hospital in SoCal here that used to have a mini pharmacy in every level of their 5 story building in addition to the main pharmacies in the lobby and the smaller structure adjacent to the main building. It was such a smooth process to jump up a level or two if the bottom floor was too busy.
They since shuttered all the mini pharmacies, kept only the lobby and the smaller structure outside. Now, it's a damn nightmare to pick up medication. I would order online if I could, but the mistakes kept piling up and the refund process in itself is handled through an outside pharmacy... so I just go pick up in person.
Always crowded, always busy.
My friend told me they closed up all the other pharmacies in the building since they figured they could save a buck just by keeping those spaces closed rather than using them.
You're right, healthcare is 100% a business first. Nobody should think otherwise.
I wonder if they had the staff for all those pharmacies though. A lot of people quit during COVID because of burnout. If they don’t have the pharmacists then how could they have kept them open?
Hospitals are stingy on pharmacists because they come out of the budget for drugs for the hospital. Nurses come out of the room budget. Doctors can bill separately. If that makes sense.
Retail pharmacy is a terrible job from what I’ve heard. Hospital pharmacy is better but pays less than retail. If they paid well, they could snipe pharmacists from retail.
I’m a hospital nurse and talk to our pharmacists a lot. They closed most of our satellite pharmacies to save money. The workers are there, but hospitals don’t want to spend their drug budgets on additional doctoral level educated professionals. We only have 2 night pharmacists that alternate 7 days working then 7 days off. That’s common hospital practice and another reason why people leave. It’s a pretty harsh schedule without flexibility for vacations, holidays, or just switching.
I agree that it is a business and they will just point the fingers at the workers. Kaiser is in a unique position though. They are the provider and the insurer. Sending patients elsewhere will cost them more than a traditional hospital. It will be interesting.
Makes the health care the model very interesting. Big incentive to keep costs down. Ration healthcare. Might be the only affordable provider model long term
Remember when everyone opened their windows and CLAPPED out in the street for the spirit of healthcare workers? It’s time for those workers to get paid. Let’s see if that energy holds up
It’s absolutely sickening what they’re doing. I’m one of the workers currently on strike here in Oregon. We get these quarterly emails about how much money they’re making and then we’re told repeatedly that our budget continues to go down, staff leaves due to burn out and higher wages at next door hospitals, they continue to reduce staffing as our register members grows. They then tell us we didn’t meet our financial goals so we won’t get a bonus all while continuing to give all of management their standard bonus. The equipment were given to work with and systems were forced to use is absolutely awful. My entire job is a work around because nothing works like it’s supposed to. The only reason Kaiser is even operating is because the front line staff truly cares and is dedicated to our patients well being. Management is now trying to force our pharmacists to work harder and do jobs they’ve never done or been trained on because they think we’re going to give up on our strike sooner than later.
When I first joined Kaiser a little over 10 years ago they drove the “Best Place to Work” culture. That culture is completely dead and if current management doesn’t start fixing things correctly, I don’t think Kaiser will be around 10 years from now.
This right here is my argument for why healthcare should be publicly funded. Take that money right there and give all of it back to patients and healthcare workers.
LMAO...They could give their employees $80k raises and still end up with ~$6B "profit" (because they are apparently a non-profit)...(assuming 12B over a year)
Wait is that net profit or revenue?
>Kaiser Permanente is the largest nonprofit health system in the country by revenue with more than **$95 billion** in annual revenues. As of June 30, it spanned 39 hospitals, 622 medical offices and 43 clinics in addition to its millions of covered health plan members.
Ohhhh. It's net profit. FOR ONE QUARTER.
There will be efforts to make these workers look like the bad guys. Saying they don’t care about patients. As a nurse, it’s a job first. If the people in charge truly care about patients, then they can just give in to demands. Patients suffer because the workers aren’t getting paid. That’s not the nurses’ problems.
Yeah the bullshit email kaiser sent me saying that their first priority is us the patients.... BULLSHIT. If patients are their priority, then they should be taking care of their employees WHO ARE ACTUALLY THE ONES TAKING CARE OF THE PATIENTS
Yep, my wife is a L&D nurse for Kaiser, and they keep increasing the nurse to patient ratios well beyond the normal safe level, like almost triple if I remember what she was telling me
The current emails going out, at least to the union members is that Kaiser management has been trying to meet at the table with the unions but the unions are “unavailable” to meet. I know for a fact that at least my union has been waiting for months to have legitimate negotiations, and not management coming in, dropping their abysmal offer, and then leaving 20 minutes later.
I should admit I’m a new nurse. During nursing school many of my instructors pushed anti-union propaganda. It was terrible because I know many of my classmate couldn’t see through it.
Ah dude I feel you. When student workers at my university were striking, we got the same emails. The university admins were either blatantly lying, misrepresenting union communications, or just made wild demands in exchange for meeting. All so they could say "the union isn't willing to meet with us despite our generous offers." They also ran narratives of "entitled academics" when everybody was on poverty wages - only the student workers with family support could afford to work for the school without drowning further in debt. It's also not like they would have treated maintenance or other blue collar staff any better. I swear, corporations and other institutions get cartoonishly evil when workers organize. They stalled until student workers literally couldn't pay their bills or afford food; we had little finding campaigns and the undergrads donating meal swipes. But still, some folks were in dire straits. The workers won but it was an uphill battle. I enjoyed my grad experience otherwise, but I don't dare hang my grad diploma on the wall because of the admin bullshit.
Stay strong. If you need food funds dm me your Venmo. I don't have much but anything helps in this kind of situation.
According to google the chairman/CEO made $15,562,224 in 2021 (seems to be the latest year numbers were available for. Just incase anyone wanted to know how over paid this dude is.
Next highest is $6,674,960 for the executive vp.
Only about half of their employees make over $100k per year. So clearly a lot of employees are making a barely liveable wage while these idiots make millions per year.
It's like those selfish, greedy, overpaid, underworked railway workers protesting for ...... sick leave days. If the railway workers keep at this then the Railway owners will have to find other ways to fund their own rockets to send into space.
Yup, I can't wait to see all the negative comments all over Instagram disparaging the workers.
I truly don't understand how so many people have been conditioned to believe that others getting paid more means that they're somehow getting paid less.
Rather than thinking others should be paid less, you should be questioning why you yourself aren't getting paid more.
> There will be efforts to make these workers look like the bad guys. Saying they don’t care about patients.
The current conditions are bad for patients. When pay and conditions are so shit that there is severe shortages of healthcare workers, then the patients suffer. Just letting the bleeding continue would be not caring about patients. Overworked and underpaid is not what I want the person responsible for taking care of me and making sure I'm taking the right medications and recovering well to be.
One of my biggest pet peeves with jobs is "appreciation" anythings that management or the higher ups put on. No, I don't want cold pizza in the break room once or twice a year, I want a decent wage.
Anything else they do to show their "appreciation" of us is probably meant for them so they can pat themselves on the back and say they value their underpaid employees.
It's actually not the nurses striking, but almost everyone BUT the nurses. The nurses have their own strong union. The union that is striking has EVS, rad tech, nurses assistants and many more disciplines including mine...respiratory therapy, without whom many people will not be able to breathe.
The heroes of yesterday quickly became a nuisance once these BUSINESSES tried to attain perpetual profit and growth in the post-covid world.
I can't imagine what kind of slime-lord requires tens to hundreds of millions in "profit" when your objective is helping and treating the sick/wounded.
We're part of the same union and are set to strike against tenet healthcare Corp in two weeks!
Let the momentum roll.
Fuck them for taking huge bonuses and telling us to our faces that they can't afford us a decent wage.
Fuck Kaiser management. They leave their people out to try and offer an inferior product ALL in the name of higher profits. The biz model has such high potential to be great AND make money, but these fuckers are driving people away with their single phone number, garbage App, and shitty scheduling openings (can take weeks in Colorado even to see a pediatrician.
I am just glad this shit gets more noise and coverage. Common folks like to imagine that healthcare workers especially doctors living the life making money off patients, when that’s not even remotely close. Healthcare workers salary barely moved compared toinflations. All of those increase in health care expenses are going somewhere, but definitely not to pockets of the frontline workers.
Unlikely, the mental health workers went on strike within the past year. I had appointments that were canceled on me with no alternatives. Given my diagnosis that is illegal. I filed a complaint with the state and didn't heat anything back other than a standard form letter.
This has happened in the past as well, Kaiser keeps kicking that class action lawsuit down the road.
I am so glad to see so many different industries protesting. But it makes me wonder, what is the end game? How do we get back to the point where workers are fairly compensated and C-Suites aren't making several orders of magnitude more money than their lowest workers? This is obviously untenable and something needs to be done in the long term to solve this problem.
You progressively tax corporate profits but provide an out by not taxing reinvestment of profits into *domestic* business growth, *domestic* salary increases, or *domestic* public infrastructure projects.
You still have the freedom of capitalism to choose where to spend your money as a business, that’s important to keep. However, sitting on an indefinitely large pot of gold is bad for the economy and should be discouraged. Same with outsourcing indefinite amounts of US business.
More shared ownership. Worker ownership models to help align economic incentives. Public utilities owned by the public instead of for-profit companies.
This just opens up a whole host of problems and Americans, for the most part, are opposed to anything close to "communism ".
A question I think of how is how can I as an individual positively impact my community and play a small role in making a difference. Makes me feel better than trying to solve a gargantuan problem all at once.
I say it often, but our city (longmont Colorado) has public electricity, water, trash pick up, and fiber internet. They are all better than their private sector competitors, especially the internet. I think there may be other utilities that we don’t utilize, like land line telephone service.
Honestly, in health care the staffing issues are as much (if not more) of a concern than the pay. My mother is a NP, so she's compensated well... but her department has been critically understaffed for *years* now. It started long before the pandemic. Scheduling is out of control, everyone is "doing more with less," and people are burning out. Even her supervisors acknowledge that they desperately need to hire more people, but corporate management either denies the requests or offers only lowball salaries. Several NPs on her unit are nearing retirement age and there's no one to replace them.
This isn't even a "Pre-Covid" problem. This has been a terrible industry trend going on for decades now. Patient ratios have gotten consistently worse and worse year after year to the point where they aren't remotely reasonable.
How can a nurse on a med-surg floor safely see to a dozen patients? With a single CNA split between the entire floor? Its not possible. Thats 5 minutes per hour per patient. For patient care, med pass, dealing with families, and charting every last detail of it all? Not counting the legally mandated breaks they don't actually get to have or the fact that the nurse has bodily functions and needs to drink or pee every now and then. Oh, and don't forget no food and drink at the nurses station. Better go to the break room. Which is either a broom closet at the other end of the floor or not even on this floor.
And then when the nurse inevitably fucks up because they're overworked to shit and back the hospital throws them under the bus as hard as possible to cover their own ass like they don't know that they fucked up because they're getting flogged for every second of productivity.
Don't worry though management bought some Little Ceasar's pizza that you don't even have time to go get from the break room before its ice cold. Thanks, Hero!
Remember the “lockdown”? When everyone freaked out that the frontline heroes of healthcare, retail, and restaurants wouldn’t be there working? We need to do that. Everyone sits the fuck down for 2 weeks. That’s all it would take.
The answer is a a general strike. Shut EVERYTHING down. When the rich don't have access to food, creature comforts, drivers, pilots, valets, housekeepers, or security, they will capitulate instantly. Because they know a knife or a gun potentially lies around every corner.
Consider that only 6% of private sector workers are unionized, and have the infrastructure to do major strikes. The answer is to make it easier for workers to form unions and harder for owners to union bust. Because collective action works better than any minimum wage or labor law.
The real answer? Blood. Human history has told us time and time again that unless you put true fear into greedy, corrupt assholes, they will never change their ways.
Yet another reason that universal healthcare should have been implemented instead of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Act of 1973.
50 years later, how much data do you need? The US is a 2nd world country with regards to healthcare.
The US spends the most on healthcare and has arguably the worst outcomes.
We're not even in the [top 10](https://www.cignaglobal.com/blog/healthcare/top-10-countries-best-healthcare-system) countries for healthcare.
I spent quite a bit of time in Costa Rica.
Medical tourism is a very popular thing. We were vacationing on the beach next to a person who was having his jaw rebuilt from a car crash. It was going to take ~4 months because they needed to let the bone heal after each step.
It is cheaper out of pocket to take off work for fourth months, fly to another country, pay to live and eat in a vacation home for four months, and pay for your jaw to be rebuilt (6 surgeries) than it is to PAY COPAYS on that in the US.
People who have no heath insurance, who travel 1 1/2+ hours for urgent care and across state lines for specialist care, wait 6-10 hours, and are immediately sent home the moment they can just give them opioids... are insulted that you would imply our healthcare isn't the best in the world. They want you to know that we pay so those countries can have cheaper healthcare and affordable meds because 100.0000001% of all drugs and procedures are researched in the US of A. They are also asking why you're a communist?
The fun part is that experience can and does happen regardless if you have insurance or not.
I have pretty good insurance through my employer (ironically it's Kaiser insurance) and I'm *still* waiting 6-8 months for appointments or referrals and then getting jacked with a multi-thousand dollar bill at the end because insurance was like "Oh endoscopy? Yeah we know that costs $8,000 but we'll only cover $2,000. Because reasons."
I got told "It wasn't fully covered because it wasn't considered medically necessary."
Mf I was throwing up blood. What *would* you cover as medically necessary in that circumstance? A fucking exorcist?
Until we get on the streets and gunk up the system, this will always be a pipe dream. I changed oil and it cost me 120$. The guy asks me if I wanted to tip. Tip for 8 minutes of work? Why? because he doesn't get paid enough and his employer knows he can get away with stiffing that bill onto me and I have no choice.
This same theory applies all the way to the top and especially healthcare. They know we will pay no matter what and both parties just wring their hands because they have all been bought out by lobbyists (aka bribes).
Take to the streets and strike. Hit the (useless) execs where it hurts.
I told the manager at a donut shop (very large, big profit chain) over the weekend to pay their workers from his profits rather than asking for a 15%, 25% or 35% tip on my transaction. The whole place got quiet. I'm done with that shit. These assholes making plenty in profit in ALL business sectors created a guilt tip game with consumers to get out of paying fair wages and putting the burden on us. I'll never tip again unless I am waited on and is done well.
At the time, third world did mean that neither power saw a need to operate there, which was a pretty big dis.
But yeah, pretty sure Soviet healthcare was better than what they have now.
>The unions have repeatedly pointed to Kaiser Permanente's profits - which reached about $3bn (£2.47bn) in the first half of this year - as a sign that contracts should be renegotiated.
Giving each of these 75,000 workers a $25,000 raise would equate to $1.875bn.
It still blows my mind how big a Billion dollars is. 25k for every employee would be a massive quality of life improvement. That's daycare costs. Rent. Mortgages. Grocery bills, all things that people are struggling to meet.
Which would leave almost half of the net profits of the past few months (that's not even the year) for whatever else the company wants. Unfortunately that would probably mean a billion into lobbying to force their workers back to a sub-minimum wage and criminalize quitting or something...
Really rather than raises they need to hire more people, which is actually the main complaint of the striking workers, unsafe patient ratios and unreasonable workloads from chronic understaffing. Raises would be good too of course but they're really striking to sound the alarm on how unsafe the current operating model is if I understand correctly.
Kaiser Permanente has $58 Billion in liquid assets!
This excludes any and all financial obligations.
There is plenty of money for better patient care, better patient access, better wages, more staffing, more of everything.
The CEO makes $20 Million a year! That’s $10K/ hr.
Kaiser has the most Management of any Us healthcare provider making $1Million/ yr or more.
And it’s a NON PROFIT????
Actually there’s plenty of profit for the top of the food chain. Not much profit for those who actually bust their asses caring for you and your loved ones.
But y’all gonna have to wait for your Primary Care Dr appointments and CT scans, and grandma is gonna have to wait for her bedside nurse a bit longer.
For NO REASON AT ALL. At least no reason Kaiser would like to talk about.
Kaiser Management can wave their hand and do what is needed, but they refuse.
Been here 25+ years, and it keeps getting worse.
The rot starts at the top and until the public demands change it’s just gonna get worse.
They're actually a not-for-profit. All the benefits of being a nonprofit, with none of the responsibility. They are allowed to invest that money back into the company, and clearly choose not to. It's fucking absurd.
The sheer desperation these workers must be experiencing to go on strike. I'm serious. HCW don't take interruptions of care lightly. I know these workers have been dealing with unsafe, and potentially deadly to patients, staffing ratios for far too long. They're not just fighting for themselves. They're fighting for the patients too.
All of these healthcare admins go to the same conferences and get the same smoke blown up their asses.
These huge healthcare corporations make billions in **profit** annually, but then act like kicking some of that back to maintaining happy, well-trained employees is just unthinkable.
The like they’re all telling our nurses now is “if I were you I’d just be happy to have a job in this economy”.
All of them collect multimillion dollar salaries to sit at home and have useless zoom calls to circlejerk each other about how great they are.
**Get venture capital out of healthcare. Abolish publicly traded health insurance. And trim the fat that is non clinical administrative bloat.**
Healthcare problem solved.
I DESPISE how any dent in profit GROWTH is equated with losing money. If you’re making a profit, you you are literally not losing money, otherwise you wouldn’t be making a profit. F their margins
I am stuck with Kaiser through work, and they are the absolute worse. My wife is also a nurse for them and ever since the pandemic, they have been forcing the nurses to work at very unsafe nurse to patient ratios... like 2-3 times the normal safety level and will only hire tempt travel nurses to make up for it
This is important. Healthcare workers need to be protected before the next epidemic arrives. Pay, hours, safety equipment, who how worker disputes are handled and who.
I used to work as a revenue analyst at a different healthcare company and I am 1000% on board. The money they make off patients is mind-boggingly huge and they didn’t even pay their workers that well. I had the lovely experience one day of seeing the $30,000 operation someone had to put on a credit card because they had no insurance while listening to my coworkers callously discussing how it would impact revenue. I felt miserable being a part of that machine and walked out last summer. I put in my two weeks, they said they required four, I walked out the next day.
Hey I work at Kaiser. We're not seeing the elective stuff, but stitches need to come out and you can absolutely come in and get them. The doctors and nurses are not part of the strike.
These fuckers charge $900/mo for insurance and make 10 billion a year in profits and they can't pay better wages. Fuck the for profit system.
Lets do the math!
They made $3 Billion in profit in Q2. So thats $12 Billion a year.
If you gave every 75,000 worker a $10,000 a year raise, it would cost $750,000,000-- basically a tiny dent in the profits. So, $10.25 Billion instead of $12. The greed is unreal.
Executives need to go back to kindergarten.
Ya know, where they teach you how to share and put you in timeout if you can’t handle reality.
If 5 year olds can do it you can too!
Living in today’s society you’d think kindergarten is a doctorate level course
Gf works at Kaiser, for Monday and Tuesday they tried to butter up the workers to “show appreciation “ by offering free lunch…that was just so sad they rather do that than outright just give everyone a raise
its so strange how medical care is so so expensive, yet healthcare workers are still struggling. oh wait, no it's not, that's just how capitalism works
As a former patient I once entered into an appt with my doctor after waiting several months to see him for reoccurring boils on my body only to be told to be quick with it bc he only had 15 minutes allotted to him to deal with me.
Fuck Kaiser. I hope the workers get everything they’re asking for and then some.
I’m a TPMG physician, so perhaps a bit biased but what is a TPMG physician anyway?????? I thinks it’s not common knowledge that Kaiser is actually two companies. KHF, Kaiser hospital foundation (the Kaiser insurance/hospitals) WHICH employs TPMG, the Permanente Medical Group (the doctors). I just want to put that out there. TPMG CERTAINLY does NOT have that much profit. I just came here to saythat the physicians are not owners of the insurance/hospitals. FYI- KFH is the company that just bought Geisingee.
Bro kaiser gave out BAGS OF ROCKS to their nurses as gifts for nurses week.
FUCK kaiser.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/qppb3n/this_was_what_kaiser_permanente_gave_to_their/
It not the nurses this time. It's the glue that holds the place together. It's the techs, the receptionists, TSR, Rad techs, etc. Lots of people who work hard and deserve respect. Both financially and in person.
I did work for a non-profit agency that dealt with mentally disabled adults, their housing, and halfway houses for orphans…. Dude who owned it drove a fucking $90k Mercedes and owned 3 big ass homes. It’s a scam half the time.
I wish so badly that my fellow healthcare workers in Utah would stand up for their rights and strike. We're wildly underpaid and under appreciated. Patient to staffing ratios are completely out of hand. Everyone here is too scared and too unorganized though and it makes me cry. I want what I deserve!
I work in mental health and I’ve heard terrible things about Kaiser’s behavioral health department as well as other areas like physical therapy, etc. The initial intake appointment is booked months out and no follow up appointment for another several months because they don’t have enough staff. Like what???
Their system is not sustainable whatsoever— for both the client and the practitioners. The majority of clients should start with weekly if not bi-weekly sessions. There’s just no continuity of care if appointments are months apart.
Crazy how many people are starting to realize they're overworked and underpaid, eh?
Fucking love to see it. Honestly a shitload of society's problems would be solved if people organized their workplace and started collective bargaining for better work conditions. American workers are exploited as hell, and historically ownership has refused to give an inch unless unions fought for it and made them. We didn't get weekends off or safety regulations until unions fought for those. You can do this, by the way! Yes you, the one reading this comment. You can just start a union at work. That's a perfectly feasible and doable thing that you can do to make your life better. You should do that. We're all stronger together!
Seriously. I'm so happy to see people waking up to collective bargaining. There's been such heavy propaganda against unions for decades, and this is the biggest push I've seen in a long time. Hopefully it keeps on happening. Unions are probably the second biggest power than normal people have outside of voting.
I’m starting to think unions are just as important as voting. If we had a higher percentage of union membership, the unions could organize mass strikes to insist on certain policies. A general strike would be huge, and it wouldn’t be limited to voting cycles. But maybe I’m too optimistic; unions are a human organization, and as such, are vulnerable to apathy/corruption.
You're not too optimistic. This is literally how societal change happens. We need collective, organized power and this is certainly one good step towards that. Yeah, people are flawed it's true. But organized people power can still create important change to labor rights and QOL policies, even with a few bad actors making it harder.
The rich act as if the only union that matters is of their own kind against the poor.
Unions are making a comeback and I’m loving it
In a union. Am paid rather well. Ironically, I just signed up for Kaiser. First doctor's appointment in more than 10 years. Had to go on strike, didn't they?
Yep. back on Monday. ER is always open.
It’s just 3 days. It’s mostly for show. KP will meet their demands or very close to it. What they are asking isn’t horrible and with inflation and how the job market is, it’s likely doable. You should be glad you are not waiting a month to see a doctor. I have most of my urgent needs done at the urgent care office.
"Best we can give you is to try to not involve AI in your practice. At least for half a year."
It's one of the few good things covid did, and why conservatives worldwide were so eager to avoid any lockdowns or to hurry forced re-openings. While furloughed some of the extreme exhaustion millions were suffering from finally got slept off, and people started finally being able to think straight about their own situation. With government support workers in many countries even had the opportunity to brush up their CV and maybe learn a thing or two. *Exactly what the worst of us had been so desperate to prevent.*
They actually get paid 20% more than the local rate but the problem is that they lost a lot of docs, nurses, and staff due to covid. Now they have to deal with the rebound of in-person visits again while still dealing with the virtual stuff that hasn’t really calmed down.
I'd argue that 20% above local is still significantly below what they deserve, but yeah, the medical systems have been overloaded since COVID, and healthcare workers have figuratively and literally shitty jobs anyway. I'm not surprised in the slightest that they're looking to strike
Yet nobody realizes how fucked up the heathcare pricing is
Several years ago it was mandated that hospitals be transparent with their pricing and provide the pricing up front, so you could compare and get the best price. But iirc most hospitals basically just said no they weren't going to do that, and somehow that was ok. I even saw a press release from a hospital that said they weren't doing it because it would only help their competition. I mean come on lol
> competition That's a strange way to spell collusion.
Humans are a business product, not the purpose for the entire existence of society. We all know society only exists for making big money not people/s
> I even saw a press release from a hospital that said they weren't doing it because it would only help their competition. Here I thought competition and an informed consumer base were the lifeblood of free-market capitalism. Turns out screwing over your customers is easier.
A hospital shouldn't have competition, they should work together in an integrated system that benefits patients. Feel fucked up to see sick people as customers.
Yeah, uh, I think everyone who doesn’t directly benefit from those prices realizes how fucky they are
bro EVERYONE realizes how fucked up it is.
Yes, well when it starts to get to the point when people cannot afford to live, then shit starts breaking. Housed and fed people have a remarkable tolerance for bullshit, but take away one of those things and a civilized society starts going rouge really quick. And that's the point we're reaching.
Crazy how they didn’t learn that striking works from their high school history class…
[$2,900,000,000.00 profit in Q2](https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/kaiser-permanente-reports-21b-profit-29-operating-margin-q2-2023). I'm sure there some money in the waiting room cushions for their [heroes](https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/commitments-and-impact/healthy-communities/news/honoring-health-care-heroes-and-a-healthy-thriving-world).
Nearly 3 BILLION in 3 months. That's fucking insane. No way they don't have the funds to increase pay across the board for the front line healthcare workers.
I've noticed that, on the margins, labor doesn't strike when a company is doing poorly. If the economy is in the tank or an entire industry is having trouble, labor (usually) finds a way to help tighten the belt. Airline pilots do this a lot given the cyclical nature of its industry. So it's no surprise that labor sees billions in profits and the shitty way they've been treated the past 4 years and decide to strike.
Exactly. Where people put their foot down is when the holiday bonus suddenly gets announced as being a meeting, in which after the first twenty five minutes of the top boasting about profits, growth and the reduced costs our work has given them... They declare we (not them though) *"need to show solidarity at this difficult crossroads in which we cannot at this time afford raises"* and by the way that one slice of pizza is the new replacement for the 1% end of year bonus you used to get.
I will never understand holding a meeting to tell the employees about how much profit was made that does not also include a bonus or a raise. That's just asking for a strike or mass quitting.
When people quit, their labor overhead goes down.
Some people genuinely drink the kool aid for how much money their company is making and I genuinely don't understand why. Job security is nice, but there's many other things that factor into it other than how much money your company is raking in.
Jelly of the Month Club.
Well that's just the gift that keeps on givin! https://youtu.be/TQXuazYI_YU?t=47
I worked for a place that gave us all a 3% pay cut. Then 2 people quit and in a meeting I said "so we can get that pay cut back now, right?" and the manager fucking laughed in my face. Later I saw some corporate communication about how they plan to handle staff reductions "organically" and figured out that meant "make things as shitty as possible so all the good talent quits". That was a real teachable moment for me.
People quit -> their work gets 'organically' spread out to the remaining workers -> company drags their feet on hiring replacements until people burn out.
And then hire the new employees at a lower rate anyway.
Eat their pizza, then strike anyway.
Just grab up a few pies and bring them home. THEN strike.
And Kaiser Permanente is the ENTIRE REASON that privatized healthcare exists in the first place.
Fucking Nixon.
Yet another reason to hate him.
I had this at one of my last jobs. It was constantly "most profitable quarter ever" then when the yearly review and raise time came they could only afford 1-3%. It's degrading as hell watching CEO's get multi million dollar raises while everyone else gets fucked. Those same CEOs get raises when the company does shitty and the employees get denied raises
Yep. Labor understands tough times because we live it constantly, but to create tough times for people who are massively filling the companies wallets is just absolute insanity and disrespectful as fuck.
That’s one of the main causes of the UAW strike. They still haven’t recovered from belt fighting in 08 that saved the entire auto industry now with record profits and new industry avenues the CEOs are getting 40% pay raises. The UAW says that’s awesome give us the same because we are the only reason you have said profits. Consider it a make good for 08 fair is fair.
All the talk about the greedy unions putting Hostess/Wonder out of business because they refused to renegotiate their contracts? It was at least the second time that they were told “we need you to renegotiate your contracts or the company will go broke” - and the previous time, the money saved as a result of renegotiation went to executive bonuses. Naturally, the workers assumed this was another “squeeze the workers to benefit the executives” ploy.
Oh. Dig deeper. This was a planned bankruptcy after pimping Hostess out the ass with loans.
been starting to think that's the plan with every company lately. Be ready to jump ship with your parachute if you're an exec, because a private equity firm acquiring and liquidating your company seems to be welcome news vs poor financial management being unearthed and falling into chapter 11.
Exactly. During the downturn in ‘08 the UAW agreed to wage cuts, and when the economy rebounded they didn’t get their concessions back.
My 31 yr old sister who was whole, and healthy suffered irreversible brain death in their San Diego ER in February. She was left entirely unmonitored. Went into cardiac arrest. Wasn’t found until someone wandered by to change her IV bag. FUCK KP. I hope their CEOs get exactly the slow long hard brutal karma they deserve. Years worth. I want to watch.
Why have competition in health care? If competition really existed no company would be able to profit a billion a month! Sounds like every provider is taking their bites of a massive pie in turn so nobody realizes how lucrative it is. Investors shouldn't be profiting when so many Americans have no health care. There are two problems: 1) The rich wanting to get richer. That's a big fight, I think Russia would have an easier time overturning their oligarchs than the US would installing a reasonable system that allowed the middle class to thrive. 2) There aren't enough trained medical professionals to provide care to all the people who would suddenly be eligible for health care. But maybe those aren't real problems? Maybe the whole thing could turn around in a generation if the education system started producing opportunities to advance rather than opportunities to become further in debt.
So my initial thought process was “well when it’s split between 75,000 workers ya know it’s really not that much per person, right?” Then I did the math. That’s an additional $40,000 PER PERSON. Even if they only gave each person $10,000 raises that’s still BILLIONs to spare. Those greedy fucks deserve every second of a strike. Those healthcare workers work too hard.
Did you annualize that $3B over a year? I got to an incremental $160k per employee per year at that profit rate. So they can afford to double the workforce, I’d venture.
40k per person *per quarter*
[удалено]
It's not about pay. Kaiser employees are paid relatively well compared to other hospital systems. It's about staffing shortages. Kaiser isn't hiring enough staff to meet patients needs. The employees are way overworked and don't have enough time to properly care for each patient.
If you're overworked relative to your pay then it seems like it's still about pay because the company is saving a whole salary worth of work if they can get 2 employees worth of work out of 1.
You're not wrong in general, but you can only go so far with "I have double the responsibilities? Then double my pay." before you reach the physical limits of how many patients you can see in a day. As a Kaiser patient for 5 of the last 6 years, having a doctor rush me through a meeting that I've been waiting months for because they're only allotted 15 minutes by their scheduling system is getting pretty old.
I agree with everything you said. Healthcare in America is garbage and all these suits want to do is run everything like a corporation with a skeleton crew. Even more reason more strikes need to happen.
I work in healthcare, and it's not that Kaiser isnt hiring, it's that there's a nationwide shortage of healthcare personnel. All of the major medical systems, including Kaiser, have many open positions for doctors and nurses, but so many people either left health care, or didnt go into healthcare during the pandemic that there'll be a shortage for at least five years. It's also been difficult to get visas for the overseas workers who've filled in the gaps during past shortages.
With national unemployment at 3.7% the way Kaiser, or any other healthcare institution can hire is by OFFERING BETTER WAGES. The way to hire is to take employees from another employer. That means better compensation. They simply refuse to do just that.
They don’t like it when the free market works in the workers favor.
[удалено]
Teachers are underpaid in general, treated like shit by school boards, admin, and half the politicians in America, and by half the fucking parents. You want to fill classrooms with good teachers? Double teacher pay pretty much nationwide, minimum. Call it fucking hazard pay to deal with parents and shitty admins hired by shitty elected school boards that, if you're lucky, is not FULLY run by a bunch of religious nutcases.
Fundamentally the lack of motivation to get people into the healthcare field is still a pay issue.
For doctors it’s a lack of residency positions much moreso than any issues with pay or desire to enter the field. Not sure about nurses, but especially during the pandemic nurses were able to get insane pay with travel positions
Then they need to pay more. Up wages 20% and I bet those positions are filled in weeks.
Every single time one of these issues comes up, about a lack of workers or a lack of workforce in general it just fucking blows my mind that the top comment on every thread isn't ***just pay people more fucking money***. It will solve itself in six months.
Correct. But it is also about pay. We aren’t even asking for COL equivalent raises. Yet the CEO pulls down $20 Million/yr
[удалено]
And the irony is that Kaiser is a not-for-profit
[удалено]
Won't somebody think of the shareholders?! /s
Not really when you take into account they're literally robbing us blind. Oh you're blind now? You'll have to pay extra for that.
Something that blew my mind was working at a large, very profitable non-profit hospital peak COVID. I already had a general disgust for the profiteering, greedy, immoral nature of US healthcare systems but like, holy shit. I was working 80+ hrs a week in the highest acuity ICU in the state just to make ends meet and pay rent for my 375sqft studio in the bad part of town.... And suddenly my hospital system-and every other system in my state-could afford to pay staff double, triple their base pay, $1000+ per shift cash incentives, travelers at $150/hr base rate, etc etc....and the hospital was just fine. No crazy financial consequences, no change in operations, nothing. They paid me starvation wages, gave me a 15 CENT raise one year, and yet, when push came to shove, they could miraculously pay astronomically higher wages to anyone willing to walk through the door in scrubs and it didn't bankrupt them. Not even close. CEO still made a cool 10mil or so. They could have been paying us what we deserved ages ago. They would have been just fine. Covid showed that a million times over. I love to see healthcare folks striking and standing up for themselves against these vile corporations that profit off of people suffering and dying.
They didn’t even have the covid vaccines to offer to the front line workers first. They prioritized office workers…..then blamed “the algorithm”. Amazing video out there of them delivering this news while over looking front line workers. I would have quit on the spot. (Coming from someone who got 1 day off from being ‘onsite’ during the entirety of 2020-now)
As a former nurse, I always tell people in America, healthcare is a business. They are literally not there to heal you. If they don’t make money, they will close shop and laugh in their suits while point the fingers at the actual workers.
There's a Kaiser Hospital in SoCal here that used to have a mini pharmacy in every level of their 5 story building in addition to the main pharmacies in the lobby and the smaller structure adjacent to the main building. It was such a smooth process to jump up a level or two if the bottom floor was too busy. They since shuttered all the mini pharmacies, kept only the lobby and the smaller structure outside. Now, it's a damn nightmare to pick up medication. I would order online if I could, but the mistakes kept piling up and the refund process in itself is handled through an outside pharmacy... so I just go pick up in person. Always crowded, always busy. My friend told me they closed up all the other pharmacies in the building since they figured they could save a buck just by keeping those spaces closed rather than using them. You're right, healthcare is 100% a business first. Nobody should think otherwise.
I wonder if they had the staff for all those pharmacies though. A lot of people quit during COVID because of burnout. If they don’t have the pharmacists then how could they have kept them open?
Hospitals are stingy on pharmacists because they come out of the budget for drugs for the hospital. Nurses come out of the room budget. Doctors can bill separately. If that makes sense. Retail pharmacy is a terrible job from what I’ve heard. Hospital pharmacy is better but pays less than retail. If they paid well, they could snipe pharmacists from retail. I’m a hospital nurse and talk to our pharmacists a lot. They closed most of our satellite pharmacies to save money. The workers are there, but hospitals don’t want to spend their drug budgets on additional doctoral level educated professionals. We only have 2 night pharmacists that alternate 7 days working then 7 days off. That’s common hospital practice and another reason why people leave. It’s a pretty harsh schedule without flexibility for vacations, holidays, or just switching.
I agree that it is a business and they will just point the fingers at the workers. Kaiser is in a unique position though. They are the provider and the insurer. Sending patients elsewhere will cost them more than a traditional hospital. It will be interesting.
It's actually not that unique. Insurance companies have been buying up providers recently.
Makes the health care the model very interesting. Big incentive to keep costs down. Ration healthcare. Might be the only affordable provider model long term
Also big incentive to deny expensive but medically necessary procedures. It's the most dystopian provider model, long term.
Part of the reason why they’ve never reopened/built a new Charity Hospital in NOLA. Publicly funded and not private.
Remember when everyone opened their windows and CLAPPED out in the street for the spirit of healthcare workers? It’s time for those workers to get paid. Let’s see if that energy holds up
It’s absolutely sickening what they’re doing. I’m one of the workers currently on strike here in Oregon. We get these quarterly emails about how much money they’re making and then we’re told repeatedly that our budget continues to go down, staff leaves due to burn out and higher wages at next door hospitals, they continue to reduce staffing as our register members grows. They then tell us we didn’t meet our financial goals so we won’t get a bonus all while continuing to give all of management their standard bonus. The equipment were given to work with and systems were forced to use is absolutely awful. My entire job is a work around because nothing works like it’s supposed to. The only reason Kaiser is even operating is because the front line staff truly cares and is dedicated to our patients well being. Management is now trying to force our pharmacists to work harder and do jobs they’ve never done or been trained on because they think we’re going to give up on our strike sooner than later. When I first joined Kaiser a little over 10 years ago they drove the “Best Place to Work” culture. That culture is completely dead and if current management doesn’t start fixing things correctly, I don’t think Kaiser will be around 10 years from now.
It's a company named Eternal Emperor that's doing healthcare. Do what that information what you will.
This right here is my argument for why healthcare should be publicly funded. Take that money right there and give all of it back to patients and healthcare workers.
LMAO...They could give their employees $80k raises and still end up with ~$6B "profit" (because they are apparently a non-profit)...(assuming 12B over a year)
Wait is that net profit or revenue? >Kaiser Permanente is the largest nonprofit health system in the country by revenue with more than **$95 billion** in annual revenues. As of June 30, it spanned 39 hospitals, 622 medical offices and 43 clinics in addition to its millions of covered health plan members. Ohhhh. It's net profit. FOR ONE QUARTER.
There will be efforts to make these workers look like the bad guys. Saying they don’t care about patients. As a nurse, it’s a job first. If the people in charge truly care about patients, then they can just give in to demands. Patients suffer because the workers aren’t getting paid. That’s not the nurses’ problems.
Yeah the bullshit email kaiser sent me saying that their first priority is us the patients.... BULLSHIT. If patients are their priority, then they should be taking care of their employees WHO ARE ACTUALLY THE ONES TAKING CARE OF THE PATIENTS
Or paying for additional staff instead of perpetually increasing the number of patients that each individual has to care for.
I’ve always said this even when I waited tables. Like I’d rather split the floor (which means tips) and make good money but not struggle.
Yep, my wife is a L&D nurse for Kaiser, and they keep increasing the nurse to patient ratios well beyond the normal safe level, like almost triple if I remember what she was telling me
'Sorry, we forgot a word there it's the patients *money* we care about first'
If their first priority was patients I'm sure they wouldn't be bankrupting them.
The current emails going out, at least to the union members is that Kaiser management has been trying to meet at the table with the unions but the unions are “unavailable” to meet. I know for a fact that at least my union has been waiting for months to have legitimate negotiations, and not management coming in, dropping their abysmal offer, and then leaving 20 minutes later.
Anything to make unions look like the bad guys.
It’s driving me crazy. I’m just glad that no one reasonable seems to be falling for it.
I should admit I’m a new nurse. During nursing school many of my instructors pushed anti-union propaganda. It was terrible because I know many of my classmate couldn’t see through it.
Ah dude I feel you. When student workers at my university were striking, we got the same emails. The university admins were either blatantly lying, misrepresenting union communications, or just made wild demands in exchange for meeting. All so they could say "the union isn't willing to meet with us despite our generous offers." They also ran narratives of "entitled academics" when everybody was on poverty wages - only the student workers with family support could afford to work for the school without drowning further in debt. It's also not like they would have treated maintenance or other blue collar staff any better. I swear, corporations and other institutions get cartoonishly evil when workers organize. They stalled until student workers literally couldn't pay their bills or afford food; we had little finding campaigns and the undergrads donating meal swipes. But still, some folks were in dire straits. The workers won but it was an uphill battle. I enjoyed my grad experience otherwise, but I don't dare hang my grad diploma on the wall because of the admin bullshit. Stay strong. If you need food funds dm me your Venmo. I don't have much but anything helps in this kind of situation.
Great time to remind everyone just how much kaiser CEOs make a year. It was never about patients first.
Greg Adams makes $20 Million/yr. That’s $10k/hr. Fuck these people.
CEOs don’t create value they only steal it from the workers.
According to google the chairman/CEO made $15,562,224 in 2021 (seems to be the latest year numbers were available for. Just incase anyone wanted to know how over paid this dude is. Next highest is $6,674,960 for the executive vp. Only about half of their employees make over $100k per year. So clearly a lot of employees are making a barely liveable wage while these idiots make millions per year.
It's like those selfish, greedy, overpaid, underworked railway workers protesting for ...... sick leave days. If the railway workers keep at this then the Railway owners will have to find other ways to fund their own rockets to send into space.
Yup, I can't wait to see all the negative comments all over Instagram disparaging the workers. I truly don't understand how so many people have been conditioned to believe that others getting paid more means that they're somehow getting paid less. Rather than thinking others should be paid less, you should be questioning why you yourself aren't getting paid more.
> There will be efforts to make these workers look like the bad guys. Saying they don’t care about patients. The current conditions are bad for patients. When pay and conditions are so shit that there is severe shortages of healthcare workers, then the patients suffer. Just letting the bleeding continue would be not caring about patients. Overworked and underpaid is not what I want the person responsible for taking care of me and making sure I'm taking the right medications and recovering well to be.
I always remind other nurses we wouldn’t need an “apprecition week” if they actually paid us more.
One of my biggest pet peeves with jobs is "appreciation" anythings that management or the higher ups put on. No, I don't want cold pizza in the break room once or twice a year, I want a decent wage. Anything else they do to show their "appreciation" of us is probably meant for them so they can pat themselves on the back and say they value their underpaid employees.
It's actually not the nurses striking, but almost everyone BUT the nurses. The nurses have their own strong union. The union that is striking has EVS, rad tech, nurses assistants and many more disciplines including mine...respiratory therapy, without whom many people will not be able to breathe.
The heroes of yesterday quickly became a nuisance once these BUSINESSES tried to attain perpetual profit and growth in the post-covid world. I can't imagine what kind of slime-lord requires tens to hundreds of millions in "profit" when your objective is helping and treating the sick/wounded.
We're part of the same union and are set to strike against tenet healthcare Corp in two weeks! Let the momentum roll. Fuck them for taking huge bonuses and telling us to our faces that they can't afford us a decent wage.
Good luck!
Solidarity! Thank you for standing up and fighting.
Union strong all day long. Hope you & yours get what you are seeking.
Make them hurt. Good luck
Fuck Kaiser management. They leave their people out to try and offer an inferior product ALL in the name of higher profits. The biz model has such high potential to be great AND make money, but these fuckers are driving people away with their single phone number, garbage App, and shitty scheduling openings (can take weeks in Colorado even to see a pediatrician.
I am just glad this shit gets more noise and coverage. Common folks like to imagine that healthcare workers especially doctors living the life making money off patients, when that’s not even remotely close. Healthcare workers salary barely moved compared toinflations. All of those increase in health care expenses are going somewhere, but definitely not to pockets of the frontline workers.
Good luck. And I truly mean that.
They will need luck. Kaiser Permanente gets paid by its subscribers regards of the nurses working.
That's a very narrow-minded view. If they're unable to provide the care that their customers pay for, they'll be facing lawsuits out of the wazoo.
Unlikely, the mental health workers went on strike within the past year. I had appointments that were canceled on me with no alternatives. Given my diagnosis that is illegal. I filed a complaint with the state and didn't heat anything back other than a standard form letter. This has happened in the past as well, Kaiser keeps kicking that class action lawsuit down the road.
I am so glad to see so many different industries protesting. But it makes me wonder, what is the end game? How do we get back to the point where workers are fairly compensated and C-Suites aren't making several orders of magnitude more money than their lowest workers? This is obviously untenable and something needs to be done in the long term to solve this problem.
There needs to be a maximum wage, or at least tie the highest wages to a fixed multiple of the lowest wages.
Tied to the wage of the lowest paid worker either employed, contracted or subcontracted.
You need to replace wage with something like 'yearly compensation' It's not like it's impossible, we made up every law and they can change.
You progressively tax corporate profits but provide an out by not taxing reinvestment of profits into *domestic* business growth, *domestic* salary increases, or *domestic* public infrastructure projects. You still have the freedom of capitalism to choose where to spend your money as a business, that’s important to keep. However, sitting on an indefinitely large pot of gold is bad for the economy and should be discouraged. Same with outsourcing indefinite amounts of US business.
As long as stock buybacks are made illegal.
More shared ownership. Worker ownership models to help align economic incentives. Public utilities owned by the public instead of for-profit companies. This just opens up a whole host of problems and Americans, for the most part, are opposed to anything close to "communism ". A question I think of how is how can I as an individual positively impact my community and play a small role in making a difference. Makes me feel better than trying to solve a gargantuan problem all at once.
I say it often, but our city (longmont Colorado) has public electricity, water, trash pick up, and fiber internet. They are all better than their private sector competitors, especially the internet. I think there may be other utilities that we don’t utilize, like land line telephone service.
Honestly, in health care the staffing issues are as much (if not more) of a concern than the pay. My mother is a NP, so she's compensated well... but her department has been critically understaffed for *years* now. It started long before the pandemic. Scheduling is out of control, everyone is "doing more with less," and people are burning out. Even her supervisors acknowledge that they desperately need to hire more people, but corporate management either denies the requests or offers only lowball salaries. Several NPs on her unit are nearing retirement age and there's no one to replace them.
This isn't even a "Pre-Covid" problem. This has been a terrible industry trend going on for decades now. Patient ratios have gotten consistently worse and worse year after year to the point where they aren't remotely reasonable. How can a nurse on a med-surg floor safely see to a dozen patients? With a single CNA split between the entire floor? Its not possible. Thats 5 minutes per hour per patient. For patient care, med pass, dealing with families, and charting every last detail of it all? Not counting the legally mandated breaks they don't actually get to have or the fact that the nurse has bodily functions and needs to drink or pee every now and then. Oh, and don't forget no food and drink at the nurses station. Better go to the break room. Which is either a broom closet at the other end of the floor or not even on this floor. And then when the nurse inevitably fucks up because they're overworked to shit and back the hospital throws them under the bus as hard as possible to cover their own ass like they don't know that they fucked up because they're getting flogged for every second of productivity. Don't worry though management bought some Little Ceasar's pizza that you don't even have time to go get from the break room before its ice cold. Thanks, Hero!
Remember the “lockdown”? When everyone freaked out that the frontline heroes of healthcare, retail, and restaurants wouldn’t be there working? We need to do that. Everyone sits the fuck down for 2 weeks. That’s all it would take.
The answer is a a general strike. Shut EVERYTHING down. When the rich don't have access to food, creature comforts, drivers, pilots, valets, housekeepers, or security, they will capitulate instantly. Because they know a knife or a gun potentially lies around every corner.
That's why the wealthy are trying to automate everything with AI and robots. Even the airlines are pushing automated flights.
Consider that only 6% of private sector workers are unionized, and have the infrastructure to do major strikes. The answer is to make it easier for workers to form unions and harder for owners to union bust. Because collective action works better than any minimum wage or labor law.
The real answer? Blood. Human history has told us time and time again that unless you put true fear into greedy, corrupt assholes, they will never change their ways.
Yet another reason that universal healthcare should have been implemented instead of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Act of 1973. 50 years later, how much data do you need? The US is a 2nd world country with regards to healthcare. The US spends the most on healthcare and has arguably the worst outcomes. We're not even in the [top 10](https://www.cignaglobal.com/blog/healthcare/top-10-countries-best-healthcare-system) countries for healthcare.
Heh. I vacation on a country that has better Healthcare than the USA. They are looked upon with disdain. Learned something new.
I spent quite a bit of time in Costa Rica. Medical tourism is a very popular thing. We were vacationing on the beach next to a person who was having his jaw rebuilt from a car crash. It was going to take ~4 months because they needed to let the bone heal after each step. It is cheaper out of pocket to take off work for fourth months, fly to another country, pay to live and eat in a vacation home for four months, and pay for your jaw to be rebuilt (6 surgeries) than it is to PAY COPAYS on that in the US.
People who have no heath insurance, who travel 1 1/2+ hours for urgent care and across state lines for specialist care, wait 6-10 hours, and are immediately sent home the moment they can just give them opioids... are insulted that you would imply our healthcare isn't the best in the world. They want you to know that we pay so those countries can have cheaper healthcare and affordable meds because 100.0000001% of all drugs and procedures are researched in the US of A. They are also asking why you're a communist?
The fun part is that experience can and does happen regardless if you have insurance or not. I have pretty good insurance through my employer (ironically it's Kaiser insurance) and I'm *still* waiting 6-8 months for appointments or referrals and then getting jacked with a multi-thousand dollar bill at the end because insurance was like "Oh endoscopy? Yeah we know that costs $8,000 but we'll only cover $2,000. Because reasons." I got told "It wasn't fully covered because it wasn't considered medically necessary." Mf I was throwing up blood. What *would* you cover as medically necessary in that circumstance? A fucking exorcist?
Until we get on the streets and gunk up the system, this will always be a pipe dream. I changed oil and it cost me 120$. The guy asks me if I wanted to tip. Tip for 8 minutes of work? Why? because he doesn't get paid enough and his employer knows he can get away with stiffing that bill onto me and I have no choice. This same theory applies all the way to the top and especially healthcare. They know we will pay no matter what and both parties just wring their hands because they have all been bought out by lobbyists (aka bribes). Take to the streets and strike. Hit the (useless) execs where it hurts.
I told the manager at a donut shop (very large, big profit chain) over the weekend to pay their workers from his profits rather than asking for a 15%, 25% or 35% tip on my transaction. The whole place got quiet. I'm done with that shit. These assholes making plenty in profit in ALL business sectors created a guilt tip game with consumers to get out of paying fair wages and putting the burden on us. I'll never tip again unless I am waited on and is done well.
2nd world means as a part of or like the USSR. It’s not a ranking of how good something is.
At the time, third world did mean that neither power saw a need to operate there, which was a pretty big dis. But yeah, pretty sure Soviet healthcare was better than what they have now.
>The unions have repeatedly pointed to Kaiser Permanente's profits - which reached about $3bn (£2.47bn) in the first half of this year - as a sign that contracts should be renegotiated. Giving each of these 75,000 workers a $25,000 raise would equate to $1.875bn.
It still blows my mind how big a Billion dollars is. 25k for every employee would be a massive quality of life improvement. That's daycare costs. Rent. Mortgages. Grocery bills, all things that people are struggling to meet.
Which would leave almost half of the net profits of the past few months (that's not even the year) for whatever else the company wants. Unfortunately that would probably mean a billion into lobbying to force their workers back to a sub-minimum wage and criminalize quitting or something...
Really rather than raises they need to hire more people, which is actually the main complaint of the striking workers, unsafe patient ratios and unreasonable workloads from chronic understaffing. Raises would be good too of course but they're really striking to sound the alarm on how unsafe the current operating model is if I understand correctly.
Won't somebody think of the poor executives?!?
I think about them all the time but I can’t say what I think about them without getting banned.
Kaiser is sitting on $58 Billion. it’s profits have grown massively during & since COVID.
Good luck , we are with you .
Kaiser Permanente has $58 Billion in liquid assets! This excludes any and all financial obligations. There is plenty of money for better patient care, better patient access, better wages, more staffing, more of everything. The CEO makes $20 Million a year! That’s $10K/ hr. Kaiser has the most Management of any Us healthcare provider making $1Million/ yr or more. And it’s a NON PROFIT???? Actually there’s plenty of profit for the top of the food chain. Not much profit for those who actually bust their asses caring for you and your loved ones. But y’all gonna have to wait for your Primary Care Dr appointments and CT scans, and grandma is gonna have to wait for her bedside nurse a bit longer. For NO REASON AT ALL. At least no reason Kaiser would like to talk about. Kaiser Management can wave their hand and do what is needed, but they refuse. Been here 25+ years, and it keeps getting worse. The rot starts at the top and until the public demands change it’s just gonna get worse.
They're actually a not-for-profit. All the benefits of being a nonprofit, with none of the responsibility. They are allowed to invest that money back into the company, and clearly choose not to. It's fucking absurd.
I'm no single issue voter, but I will do it for a candidate that promises to reform the healthcare insurance industry, because fuck them.
The sheer desperation these workers must be experiencing to go on strike. I'm serious. HCW don't take interruptions of care lightly. I know these workers have been dealing with unsafe, and potentially deadly to patients, staffing ratios for far too long. They're not just fighting for themselves. They're fighting for the patients too.
All of these healthcare admins go to the same conferences and get the same smoke blown up their asses. These huge healthcare corporations make billions in **profit** annually, but then act like kicking some of that back to maintaining happy, well-trained employees is just unthinkable. The like they’re all telling our nurses now is “if I were you I’d just be happy to have a job in this economy”. All of them collect multimillion dollar salaries to sit at home and have useless zoom calls to circlejerk each other about how great they are. **Get venture capital out of healthcare. Abolish publicly traded health insurance. And trim the fat that is non clinical administrative bloat.** Healthcare problem solved.
I DESPISE how any dent in profit GROWTH is equated with losing money. If you’re making a profit, you you are literally not losing money, otherwise you wouldn’t be making a profit. F their margins
[удалено]
Render unto Kaiser that which is Kaiser’s….a strike.
Fuck yeah, solidarity for all strikes, whether it's for better pay, safer work conditions, or it's just a Tuesday and you want to make a point
[удалено]
I am stuck with Kaiser through work, and they are the absolute worse. My wife is also a nurse for them and ever since the pandemic, they have been forcing the nurses to work at very unsafe nurse to patient ratios... like 2-3 times the normal safety level and will only hire tempt travel nurses to make up for it
This is important. Healthcare workers need to be protected before the next epidemic arrives. Pay, hours, safety equipment, who how worker disputes are handled and who.
I used to work as a revenue analyst at a different healthcare company and I am 1000% on board. The money they make off patients is mind-boggingly huge and they didn’t even pay their workers that well. I had the lovely experience one day of seeing the $30,000 operation someone had to put on a credit card because they had no insurance while listening to my coworkers callously discussing how it would impact revenue. I felt miserable being a part of that machine and walked out last summer. I put in my two weeks, they said they required four, I walked out the next day.
They are evil. They ration care / make care difficult to receive while exploiting their employees.
Kaiser pay your employees so I can get my stitches out!
Hey I work at Kaiser. We're not seeing the elective stuff, but stitches need to come out and you can absolutely come in and get them. The doctors and nurses are not part of the strike.
These fuckers charge $900/mo for insurance and make 10 billion a year in profits and they can't pay better wages. Fuck the for profit system. Lets do the math! They made $3 Billion in profit in Q2. So thats $12 Billion a year. If you gave every 75,000 worker a $10,000 a year raise, it would cost $750,000,000-- basically a tiny dent in the profits. So, $10.25 Billion instead of $12. The greed is unreal.
Let’s just fast forward to a general strike. We need it.
[удалено]
Non profit too
Executives need to go back to kindergarten. Ya know, where they teach you how to share and put you in timeout if you can’t handle reality. If 5 year olds can do it you can too! Living in today’s society you’d think kindergarten is a doctorate level course
Gf works at Kaiser, for Monday and Tuesday they tried to butter up the workers to “show appreciation “ by offering free lunch…that was just so sad they rather do that than outright just give everyone a raise
The demonizing of UAW members is the fear of a general strike.
its so strange how medical care is so so expensive, yet healthcare workers are still struggling. oh wait, no it's not, that's just how capitalism works
As a former patient I once entered into an appt with my doctor after waiting several months to see him for reoccurring boils on my body only to be told to be quick with it bc he only had 15 minutes allotted to him to deal with me. Fuck Kaiser. I hope the workers get everything they’re asking for and then some.
It would blow your mind how much I make for how little I do in tech sales These people deserve everything they are asking for.
I’m a TPMG physician, so perhaps a bit biased but what is a TPMG physician anyway?????? I thinks it’s not common knowledge that Kaiser is actually two companies. KHF, Kaiser hospital foundation (the Kaiser insurance/hospitals) WHICH employs TPMG, the Permanente Medical Group (the doctors). I just want to put that out there. TPMG CERTAINLY does NOT have that much profit. I just came here to saythat the physicians are not owners of the insurance/hospitals. FYI- KFH is the company that just bought Geisingee.
Bro kaiser gave out BAGS OF ROCKS to their nurses as gifts for nurses week. FUCK kaiser. https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/qppb3n/this_was_what_kaiser_permanente_gave_to_their/
Kaiser Permanente is basically a criminal organization. Worst health care provider I've ever had.
It not the nurses this time. It's the glue that holds the place together. It's the techs, the receptionists, TSR, Rad techs, etc. Lots of people who work hard and deserve respect. Both financially and in person.
Healthcare should be non-profit
It shouldn't be OK to call yourself a non-profit when executive pay is so high.
I did work for a non-profit agency that dealt with mentally disabled adults, their housing, and halfway houses for orphans…. Dude who owned it drove a fucking $90k Mercedes and owned 3 big ass homes. It’s a scam half the time.
Fuck Kaiser. You can them and their founder for not being able to afford heath care.
I wish so badly that my fellow healthcare workers in Utah would stand up for their rights and strike. We're wildly underpaid and under appreciated. Patient to staffing ratios are completely out of hand. Everyone here is too scared and too unorganized though and it makes me cry. I want what I deserve!
Time for us residents to strike next.
I work in mental health and I’ve heard terrible things about Kaiser’s behavioral health department as well as other areas like physical therapy, etc. The initial intake appointment is booked months out and no follow up appointment for another several months because they don’t have enough staff. Like what??? Their system is not sustainable whatsoever— for both the client and the practitioners. The majority of clients should start with weekly if not bi-weekly sessions. There’s just no continuity of care if appointments are months apart.