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.

Most of the $95 million raised both for and against today’s ballot measure came from fewer than 20 total contributors.

Nurses will receive a 15% raise over four years, including a total 6.5% raise in 2024, if the Board of Supervisors approves the tentative agreement on June 4.

The Registered Nurses Professional Association rejected a mediator’s proposal the same day it announced a three-day strike at Santa Clara County healthcare facilities, beginning Tuesday, April 2.

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

Public employee unions said the county should add, not cut, money for frontline workers in its social services, health, sheriff, behavioral health, registrar, assessor and planning departments.

Following an investigation of a patient suicide, state and federal health officials concluded that Valley Medical Center had failed to fully address serious, systemic and recurring issues that had placed patients at risk.

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 Stanford strike comes at a time of labor turmoil among nursing staffs at hospitals across the state. Stanford contract negotiations are to resume on Tuesday.

Throughout California, as COVID-19 infections deplete their staff of nurses, anesthesiologists and other essential workers, hospitals are canceling or postponing so-called 'elective' surgeries to repair injured knees and aching back, remove kidney or bladder stones, and repair cataracts or hernias, among other procedures.

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.

At an Oct. 25 rally, nurses accused the hospital of violating state-mandated nurse-to-patient rules, putting patients at risk and overworking nurses to the point of burn out.

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.