Kaiser Got Us Fired, Striking Nurses Say

The contentious 4-week-old strike by 900 registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Sunset Boulevard medical center grew nastier this week when several striking nurses who were working temporarily at Hospital of the Good Samaritan were temporarily fired.

The nurses’ union charged that Kaiser muscled Good Samaritan into firing the strikers in an effort to coerce them to end the walkout.

Kaiser officials blamed “miscommunicated information” between the two hospitals, and Good Samaritan said it was simply a “temporary bureaucratic snafu.”

The 10 nurses were rehired Thursday, a day after they were fired, but that did little to soothe the Kaiser strikers, who held a rally outside the Hollywood facility Friday to condemn what a spokeswoman called “a blatant attempt to blacklist (striking nurses) from other hospitals.”

Kaiser also recently terminated health benefits for strikers, a common management tactic during strikes but one that Kaiser--a health-maintenance organization created with political support and heavy subscription from organized labor--has never used before.

Both developments underscore the intractability of the labor dispute, which pits a union determined to financially exploit the nationwide shortage of nurses against a company that is trying to hold down costs. The strikers have the unusual weapon of being able to support themselves indefinitely through temporary work at other hospitals.

The registered nurses struck on May 13 at Kaiser Sunset, the most advanced hospital in Kaiser’s Southern California network. The strike has forced Kaiser to transfer about two-thirds of its patients to other hospitals, including Good Samaritan.

At issue is Kaiser’s attempt to cut nurses’ overtime premiums. Nurses, who are seeking a 34% pay increase over three years, said those cuts would wipe out most of the salary increase proposed by Kaiser.

Kaiser earlier this year negotiated a new contract with most of its 5,000 nurses at eight other facilities. Those nurses are represented by a different union.

The ability of nurses to command big raises was evident this week when nurses at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, represented by a professional association instead of a labor union, ratified a new contract that will pay those with five years’ experience more than $57,000 a year. Kaiser’s nurses make about $40,000 a year.

A spokeswoman for the striking nurses said they were fired Wednesday from Good Samaritan’s operating room. Deana Balfour, spokeswoman for the Local 535 of the Service Employees International Union, charged that Kaiser officials threatened to break a contract that allows Good Samaritan patients to be admitted to Kaiser unless the nurses were fired.

However, Good Samaritan spokeswoman Robin Rickernhauser said the terminations were the result of an in-house disagreement over how to classify the temporary employees. “There was a temporary bureaucratic snafu about how they should be employed,” she said. “The strike is putting everyone under enormous pressure. . . . We take absolutely no sides.”

Kaiser spokeswoman Janice Fowler Seib said Friday that “somebody on the staff of our hospital miscommunicated information” to Good Samaritan. “As soon as we realized this we informed them (Good Samaritan) that it was not our intent (to have the strikers fired) and the situation was corrected.”

The union on Thursday filed an unfair-labor charge with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Kaiser’s role in the terminations represented unlawful coercion.

Cheryl Haynes, one of the striking nurses terminated by Good Samaritan, said she was told Thursday by Good Samaritan that she would be rehired, but not until Monday because of logistic problems.

“The way we all kind of feel about this is that they’re (Kaiser) covering their butts,” Haynes said. “Somebody made the call and had us terminated and we’ll lose two days. We’re very upset about this.”

Good Samaritan said workers had not been assured of daily work since their employment was on a “per diem” basis.