Tentative OK May End Strike at Kaiser : Labor: Nurses’ union, hospital officials reach agreement to halt nine-week walkout. Ratification is expected today.

Kaiser Permanente and a union representing 885 registered nurses on Monday announced a tentative settlement of a nine-week strike at Kaiser’s Hollywood medical center.

Nurses, who struck for higher wages and to resist Kaiser’s attempt to cut back overtime payments at the Sunset Boulevard facility, will hold a ratification vote tonight. Union officials predicted easy ratification. A Kaiser spokeswoman said most nurses should be able to return to work Wednesday.

Both sides refused to discuss the terms of the proposed three-year contract, saying only that each had compromised after weeks without negotiation. Informal talks began over the weekend after pressure from local labor leaders and a federal mediator.

The strike began less than a month after Kaiser settled an eight-day strike by 11,000 technicians, maintenance workers and licensed vocational nurses at seven other hospitals and 45 clinics.

Called by Local 535 of the Service Employees International Union, the strike forced a medical center that is regarded as the high-tech jewel of Kaiser’s Southern California hospital network to drastically cut its patient load. Most patients were transferred to other Kaiser facilities or cooperating hospitals. The strike also involved a few-dozen employees at an Inglewood clinic, which continued to operate.

Both sides had predicted a long strike. Kaiser portrayed the dispute as a test of wills in the health maintenance organization’s campaign to hold down its members’ costs. The union portrayed it as a test of nurses’ ability to use the national shortage of nurses as leverage in maintaining high wages. Most of the strikers worked part time by filling daily vacancies in other Southland hospitals.

Kaiser, which now pays its nurses about $44,000 a year, wanted to reduce overtime premiums that in some cases paid Kaiser Sunset nurses 2 1/2 times their base wage. Nurses sought a 34% wage increase over three years. Kaiser offered less--so little, nurses claimed, that the base wage increase would barely make up for money they lost if overtime premiums were cut. Nurses also wanted to stop performing duties such as emptying trash and delivering food trays.

Union officials expressed more enthusiasm over the tentative settlement Monday than did Kaiser executives.

“We are ecstatic . . . the strike has produced a settlement our nurses can be proud of,” Local 535 President David Bullock said.

“There were some adjustments and modifications of both parties,” said Dany Valenzuela, Kaiser senior labor relations representative.

Bullock said Kaiser “substantially” increased its original salary offer. Valenzuela said Kaiser was able to keep “the majority of the overtime modifications.”

The strike was grating to organized labor because it had traditionally considered Kaiser--which was built with political support and heavy subscription from labor--a friendly institution.

William Robertson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, last Tuesday called Kaiser and Local 535 representatives together in a meeting with two dozen leaders of local unions to urge a settlement. Implicit in the meeting was a threat by organized labor that many unions might stop subscribing to Kaiser.

Days later federal mediator Phyllis Cayse, who had been monitoring the strike, called the two sides together for informal meetings and phone conversations that led to a compromise. Formal negotiations Monday morning solidified the tentative agreement.