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In a recent letter, Kaiser Permanente officials put union protestors on blast, alleging that striking engineers have created an unsafe environment for patients and staff with their "disruptive behavior."
The letter, which the Redwood City Pulse reviewed, was sent to local elected officials over the weekend, including to Redwood City council members. In it, Kaiser Permanente Community and Government Relations Manager of Public Affairs Matt Jacobs asked government officials to "stay neutral" during the bargaining process after he made several claims against the union.
"These individuals have pulled fire alarms without cause, blocked the delivery of critical supplies to our facilities, made false reports to regulatory authorities – wasting critical public safety resources – vandalized property and created a deliberate disturbance of hospital patients with noisemaking," wrote Jacobs in the letter. Jacobs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"We don't believe that these actions are supported by the majority of our engineers," he continued. "We have asked Local 39 Union leadership to intervene for the benefit of our patients and staff, but unfortunately, these types of tactics have continued."
In the Kaiser letter, Jacobs said officials were concerned about the Redwood City community and the entire Northern California region.
In a statement to the Pulse, Sheila Gilson, Senior Vice President and Area Manager at Kaiser Permanente Redwood City, reiterated what Jacobs wrote in the letter to elected officials.
"We acknowledge our operating engineers who are peacefully picketing to demand higher wages," she said. "However, at some locations, union activists are engaging in disruptive behavior that puts our patients and other employees at risk and disrupts the communities we serve, which we will not tolerate…At Kaiser Permanente Redwood City, we have experienced excessive noise making that has been disruptive to patient care.
"This is disrespectful at any time but unconscionable during a pandemic, where we are caring for sick and injured patients," she said.
Strike Captain Oscar Carcamo, an electrical, biomedical engineer for nuclear medicine, said that while he cannot speak for what's happening at other strike lines, the acts of vandalism alleged by Kaiser are not "occurring anywhere at this facility" in Redwood City.
Local 39 has been on strike since Sept. 18, almost one month to the date the union's contract with the health giant expired, said Carcamo. He said that the striking workers are outside the facility 24/7, each at the picket line 40 hours a week.
While thousands of Kaiser healthcare employees in unions have voted to authorize strike votes, Local 39 is the "only" Kaiser union — that he knows of — that is on the picket line, said Kaiser Permanente spokesman Karl Sonkin.
Gilson said that Kaiser "made extensive preparations so that during this strike, engineering duties are handled by skilled and experienced engineers, including those brought in from Kaiser Permanente facilities in other regions across the country."
In addition, she added, they are being supported by qualified contractors and equipment specialists, all of whom have been appropriately prepared for this work.
The letter sent by Kaiser employees to government officials sent shockwaves through the union.
It's unclear how many elected officials in San Mateo County received the letter on Saturday, but Julie Lind, executive director at the San Mateo Labor Council, said she saw the letter when multiple individuals sent it to her.
"There were even striking workers who had received it, so I have no idea what their distribution list was," Lind said. "It was not all of the electeds (sp) in the county, but it was for sure everybody that put something out (on social media) that they were at the picket line."
One of the elected officials who received the letter was RWC council member Lissette Espinoza-Garnica. Along with other elected leaders, Espinoza-Garnica rallied with the union members on Monday after reading the letter.
"I am a worker, and the most vulnerable people are workers," they said. "I want to show solidarity with unions, because so many times without unions, workers are being taken advantage of…."
Lind did not want to speculate about why Kaiser had levied the accusations against Local 39 but said they were completely false.
"Pulling a fire alarm, the workers would have to break their own picket line to go inside and pull it," she said. "That's not going to happen. Also, that's illegal, so if that had happened and they could prove it, they for sure would have called the cops."
As for the claim about the noisemaking, Lind said, "Absolutely. Because it's a strike. Also, First Amendment rights (and) it's not a residential neighborhood. That's kind of how it goes. And perhaps if Kaiser found the noise so annoying, they would go to the table and give these folks pay parity and bargain in good faith. Then they could all get back to work."
In a statement to Local 39 Stationary Engineers earlier this month, Senior Vice President of Human Resources Debora Catsavas and Chief of Medical Center Administration and Operation Darin Tankersley, Ph.D. said the hospital system had met with union leaders "a total of nine times for bargaining since July."
"We will continue to bargain in good faith in the hope of reaching a final, mutually beneficial contract as soon as possible," the Kaiser officials said in a statement. "We're pleased to have already reached agreements on three specific provisions of a new contract and look forward to completing the remaining portions of the contract.
"We continue to bargain actively and have proposed across-the-board increases and bonuses for each year of a 3-year contract that would keep our engineers among the best compensated in the profession," Catsavas and Tankersley said.
Gilson said that the hospital is "proud to be one of the most unionized health care organizations in the country."
"From our founding, labor unions have played an important role in our efforts to give more people access to high-quality care and make care more affordable," she said.
Gilson called the union strike a "bargaining tactic" and said Local 39 is one of the highest-paid "in their profession in the country."
"We are offering a reasonable wage increase and no takeaways, but the union is demanding much more," she said. "As a bargaining tactic, the union has called an open-ended strike, seeking a significant increase in wages. While we strongly believe that differences in bargaining are best worked out at the bargaining table, we respect the rights of unions to lawfully conduct a strike."
According to Carcamo, Kaiser's counter-proposals are "cents on the dollar" of what union workers have requested. Negotiations have been slow-going, with the hospital system often taking weeks to respond.
Carcamo, 41, said the union's ongoing strike is related to pay parity and engineers at Kaiser making roughly $20,000 less over three years compared to other healthcare engineers in the region.
According to a report, as of Oct. 1, engineers at St. Mary's Hospital, St. Francis Hospital and Sequoia Hospital made $72.98 an hour for the first year, including pension. In Kaiser's proposal, engineers would make $71.13 an hour, including pension and 401(k).
By year three, Kaiser would pay workers $5.90 per hour below the industry standard, Carcamo said.
A 43-year-old striking worker who did not want to give their name for fear of retaliation said that Kaiser has always negotiated in good faith for as long as they've been with the hospital system. However, they noted the pandemic-induced fear of declining profits is one factor that is contributing to stalled negotiations.
According to the healthcare giant, Kaiser's net income in 2020 was $6.4 billion, a 14 percent decline from the previous year.
As for staying neutral, Espinoza-Garnica said that was not an option.
Lind agreed.
"I think there is no neutrality in a strike," she said. "You either stand with the workers, or you don't. There is no middle ground."
This story has been updated with a response from Kaiser Permanente.
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Michelle Iracheta is the editor at the Redwood City Pulse, a local news site dedicated to providing accurate and timely news to the Redwood City community. Michelle can be reached at miracheta@rwcpulse.com, on Twitter, on Facebook, and by phone at 832-729-2105. To read more stories about Redwood City, subscribe to our daily Express newsletter on rwcpulse.com.
