United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local unions, representing pharmacy employees and clinical lab scientists at Kaiser Permanente facilities across Southern California, begin a strike on Feb. 9.

“Open-ended” strike by members of a coalition of nurses’ unions began at 7am today at more than two dozen hospitals and hundreds of clinics, including San Jose, in California and Hawaii citing unfair labor practices, staffing shortages and salary disputes.

Kaiser Permanente responded to the strike threat by proposing a solution to move forward with contract negotiations, which if successful, could avert a strike. The strike could impact care at 20 hospitals and 200 clinics.

Kaiser Permanente knew that fraudulent Medicare Advantage practices were widespread and unlawful, according to the government, and ignored numerous red flags and internal warnings that it was violating Medicare rules, including concerns raised by its own physicians about false claims and audits by its own compliance office.

The unions and Kaiser Permanente are close on a four-year total – 21.5% offered by Kaiser compared to 25% sought over four years by the unions. But the unions want nearly half of those increases – 12% – to occur in the first year.

California lawmakers called an informational hearing on mental health services at Kaiser Permanente, but the company didn’t attend.

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.