Almost half a year into the dispute, eight striking Kaiser mental health workers wrapped up a hunger strike as broken-off negotiations were set to resume.

Unions representing 68,000 Kaiser Permanente workers in California put pressure on the health care giant to raise pay and address what they called understaffing during two strikes over the past year.

Negotiations had resumed after a three-day strike ended Saturday morning and included 75,000 members of the SEIU-UHW and aligned unions.

Kaiser and SEIU-UHW officials didn't meet Thursday or Friday and said the next bargaining session is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 12.

Roughly half of Californians with private health insurance receive medical care from Kaiser Permanente.

The health system failed to reach a new contract agreement with some of its unionized employees, who today began a three-day job action at Kaiser facilities in California and several other states.

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West said if its 75,000 members strike for three days at Kaiser facilities in seven states, it could be the nation's largest ever healthcare strike. 

Attorney General Rob Bonta said undercover inspections of unsecured dumpsters at 16 different Kaiser facilities found sanitizers, medical tubes with body fluids, pharmaceuticals and over 10,000 paper patient records.

Some California hospitals have a nurse vacancy rate of 30%, stressing overworked staff and causing some to leave the industry earlier than they planned.

Starting today, as many as 48,000 University of California academic workers — including teaching assistants, postdoctoral scholars and graduate student researchers — are set to strike at all 10 UC campuses, a move that could cause some classes, grading and lab work to grind to a halt just weeks ahead of final exams.

Kaiser Permanente facilities in the greater Bay Area that had the demonstrations included medical centers in  San Jose, Manteca, Modesto, Antioch, Fremont, Oakland, San Francisco and Walnut Creek.

The strike begins Monday at Kaiser facilities in Fresno, Sacramento, San Francisco and in San Jose at Kaiser’s San Jose Medical Center on Hospital Parkway. The Kaiser facility at the Santa Clara Medical Office Building on Lawrence Expressway also is one of the strike targets.

The union representing 2,000 Kaiser Northern California mental health works announced plans for an open-ended strike this month, citing high workloads and long waits for patients.

Rival California health insurers say the special deal is unfair and could leave them with high-need patients.

Up to 40,000 union members at the health care giant are expected to protest in solidarity with striking engineers across the Bay Area and Sacramento.

Long-simmering disputes with hospital employee unions over staffing are reaching crisis points, as almost a third of California hospitals report insufficient numbers of critical workers, including nurses, technicians and janitors.