OAKLAND — A crowd of nurse anesthetists and midwives clustered on the sidewalk in front of Kaiser Permanente’s hospital on Broadway at mid-day Monday, clad in navy blue t-shirts and cheering at honking cars that rumbled down the road. A trash-can drummer kept a steady beat through the lunch hour.
They were participants in a one-day strike by hundreds of Kaiser healthcare workers in Oakland and other Northern California locations who walked out on strike to demand better care for patients
The scheduled one-day strike was scheduled to last 12 hours. It included more than 600 Northern California midwives and nurse anesthetists. At the heart of their complaints, according to the United Nurses Association of California and the Union of Health Care Professionals: Understaffing and burnout.
“Midwives and certified registered nurse anesthetists are trusted at every critical juncture — guiding families through birth, easing patients through surgery and stepping in at life’s most vulnerable moments,” said registered nurse Charmaine S. Morales, the president of UNAC/UHCP, which represents 40,000 healthcare professionals in California and Hawaii. “We’re not only fighting for fair treatment at work — we’re demanding the staffing, resources and respect that make safe, expert care possible.”
One midwife’s sign declared: “I pushed with you — now it’s time to push with us!”
The strike was the first major labor action by the group as it negotiates its first union contract with Kaiser. That contract will affect caregivers from more than 20 facilities, including Oakland.
In a statement, Kaiser said they’ve been negotiating with the union since May. The current national agreement ends Sept. 30.
“The decision to call for a strike is disappointing given Kaiser Permanente is scheduled to continue our negotiations with UNAC/UHCP on multiple dates in September,” the company said in a statement released by spokesperson Lena Howland. “We will continue to bargain in good faith to reach an agreement that is good for our employees and allows us to continue providing high-quality care that is affordable for our members and patients.”
According to Kaiser, its medical offices were expected to remain open Monday, though “it is possible we will need to postpone appointments and surgeries where necessary.”
Dr. Daniel Bell, a spokesperson for the UNAC/UCHP, said Monday by phone that the union approved the one-day strike in August following five months of waiting for Kaiser to respond “in a meaningful way” to the union’s proposal.
“This is not a rash decision,” he said. “We did a petition over unfair labor practices in San Leandro. We did a rally in March in Roseville that brought out 300 people. We had a unity petition in July. And then we had the strike authorization vote in August. We felt we were pushed to this, because we haven’t seen any meaningful offers.
“They’ve moved some on some general, boilerplate issues. But on the ones that are critical to us, they’ve haven’t made any move forward.”
Strikers were boycotting every facility in Northern California, Bell said, with the biggest demonstrations in Oakland and Roseville. The Oakland-based heath care giant has hospitals all over the Bay Area, including in Antioch, Richmond, Pleasanton, Walnut Creek, San Leandro, San Jose and San Francisco.
Sanne Jacobson, an anesthetist for 13 years at the Oakland Kaiser who has represented the anesthetists in bargaining, said the back-and-forth has has stretched on for a year and a half and that the company’s wages haven’t kept up with the market. As a result, she has watched colleagues leave for better-paying jobs.
“We’re 20% below market,” Jacobson said. “We feel like we’re being taken advantage of.”
She also said Kaiser has pushed to pull back benefits from both anesthetists and midwives in exchange for better pay increases.
Neel Arant, a striking midwife of eight years who lives in Oakland, said the provider has trended toward making healthcare workers do more with less.
“I just really believed in the Kaiser mission for maternity care — they provided people with good, safe deliveries,” Arant said. “But there have been changes in leadership and they’re starting to value profits over people.”
Kaiser asserted that its staffing levels in many cases exceed the nurse-to-patient ratios mandated by California and that they added 6,332 workers in 2024.
