More than 31,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses and other healthcare professionals walked off the job Monday in California and Hawaii, launching an open-ended unfair labor practice strike that union leaders say is rooted in Kaiser’s refusal to bargain in good faith and its failure to address widespread staffing shortages that directly affect patient care. The walkout includes registered nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physicians, and other frontline workers across more than two dozen hospitals and hundreds of clinics.
The strike is being led by the United Nurses Associations of California and the Union of Health Care Professionals, a member organization of the Alliance of Healthcare Unions. Union officials said the action will continue indefinitely until Kaiser agrees to a contract that addresses staffing levels, workload standards, and wages. In a statement released Monday, UNAC/UHCP said, “On the picket lines, healthcare workers will call attention to what’s at stake in settling a fair contract: the growing crisis caused by Kaiser’s failure to invest in safe staffing levels, timely access to quality care, and fair wages for frontline caregivers.”
Charmaine Morales, a registered nurse and president of UNAC/UHCP, said the decision to strike followed months of stalled negotiations and alleged labor violations. “We’re not going on strike to make noise,” Morales said. “We’re striking because Kaiser has committed serious unfair labor practices and because Kaiser refuses to bargain in good faith over staffing that protects patients, workload standards that stop moral injury, and the respect and dignity that Kaiser caregivers have been denied for far too long.” Morales added, “Striking is the lawful power of working people, and we are prepared to use it on behalf of our profession and patients.”
According to union officials, negotiations with Kaiser began in May 2025 but deteriorated after management left the bargaining table last month. Following that move, the union filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB has cited Kaiser for multiple labor law violations in recent years. The union has also alleged that Kaiser walked away from a bargaining agreement reached in December and attempted to bypass the agreed-upon negotiating process.
Healthcare workers say the labor dispute is inseparable from the day-to-day realities inside Kaiser facilities. Zach Pritchett, an emergency room nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles, described the consequences of understaffing in an interview with LA Progressive. “I see the end result of the poor staffing every single day,” Pritchett said. “What I’m seeing in the ER are Kaiser members who can’t get appointments for months at a time with their own primary care physicians, so they wind up here.”
Other nurses reported similar conditions to local media. One nurse told Eyewitness News, “We are always understaffed. People wait two, three, four, five hours in the emergency room. They are sitting on top of each other in the waiting room because we don’t have enough staff to take care of those patients.” Union leaders say such delays are becoming routine and place both patients and healthcare workers at risk.
Picket lines formed outside Kaiser facilities across California, including medical centers in Anaheim, Downey, Harbor City, East Hollywood, West Los Angeles, Baldwin Park, Panorama City, and Woodland Hills. Kaiser has said hospitals will remain open during the strike and that contingency plans are in place to maintain operations. Workers on the picket lines, however, argue that temporary measures do not address long-standing staffing shortages.
Union leaders have pointed to Kaiser’s financial position as a central issue in the dispute. Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest integrated managed care consortium, made up of both nonprofit and for-profit entities. A 2025 investigation by Matthew Cunningham-Cook for the Center for Media and Democracy, conducted in conjunction with the American Prospect, found that Kaiser “is sitting on $67.4 billion in reserves, up from $40 billion just four years ago.” Kaiser reported $12.9 billion in net income in 2024 and $7.9 billion through the third quarter of 2025.
UNAC/UHCP recently released a report titled “Profits Over Patients,” which states that Kaiser “has strayed from its founding mission and moved towards profit, expansion, and Wall Street-style asset accumulation that has created real consequences for patient care and caregiver well-being.” Morales said those financial priorities are at the center of the current conflict. “When Kaiser says it doesn’t have resources to fix staffing, what we hear is that a nonprofit health care organization would rather protect an enormous financial cushion than protect patients and the people who care for them,” she said.
On a picket line outside Kaiser’s Oakland Medical Center, San Francisco nurse anesthetist Jessica Servin described her reasons for striking in an interview with KQED. “We’re fighting for our livelihoods, we’re fighting for patient care,” Servin said. Reflecting on her two decades with the organization, she added, “I believed their values and their mission statement. It feels like they’re deviating from the foundation of why Kaiser was built. It feels kind of sad to be here and realize that Kaiser is choosing profit over patients.”
The strike has drawn national attention, including support from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In a post on Bluesky, Sanders wrote, “I stand in solidarity with the more than 31,000 Kaiser nurses and healthcare workers on strike in California and Hawaii.” He added, “It’s well past time for Kaiser to return to the table with a fair offer for their workers that includes safer staffing ratios and higher wages.”
Kaiser Permanente has disputed the union’s characterization of the negotiations. In a statement responding to the strike, the company said, “Our focus remains on reaching agreements that recognize the vital contributions of our employees while ensuring high-quality, affordable care.” Kaiser said it has proposed a 21.5 percent wage increase, describing it as “our strongest national bargaining offer ever,” and added, “Employees deserve their raises, and patients deserve our full attention, not prolonged disputes.”
The current walkout follows a much larger Kaiser strike last October, when more than 75,000 nurses and allied healthcare workers across California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii walked off the job over pay, staffing levels, and working conditions. As negotiations remain unresolved, the dispute continues to center on whether Kaiser’s financial priorities align with the staffing and access needs raised by its workforce. As Morales stated earlier this week, “Striking is the lawful power of working people, and we are prepared to use it on behalf of our profession and patients.”
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