Kaiser Braces for 1-Day Strike : Labor: 12,000 employees will be off the job today. The action affects 70 facilities in Orange and L.A. counties, but doctors and nurses are not involved.

With contract negotiations at a stalemate, 12,000 employees of Kaiser Permanente--the largest health maintenance organization in Southern California--voted overwhelmingly Wednesday night to reject a proposed three-year contract and stage a one-day strike today.

Employees were set to walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. today, when the current agreement expired, after voting 5,432 to 1,228 to turn down Kaiser’s offer. Exuberant union officials, who had urged their membership to reject the contract, said the vote proved they had the full backing of the rank-and-file.

“April 1 will not be April Fools’ Day at the Kaiser facilities,” said Joel Maliniak, spokesman for the Service Employees International Union, Local 399. “This is not a joke. Our message is to bring Kaiser to its senses.”

The strike will affect 70 Kaiser facilities, including eight hospitals in Orange and Los Angeles counties. Doctors and nurses, however, will not be involved; the union represents janitors, clerks, X-ray technicians, cooks and other support staff.

Donna Donan-Drasner, spokeswoman for Kaiser Permanente in Orange County, said only one of 21 Kaiser facilities here will close for the day: the Anaheim Park clinic and laboratory at 3111 W. Orange Ave. Its patients are being referred to the nearby West Anaheim North clinic at 3010 W. Orange Ave.

Also, Kaiser members will not be able to use the central appointment service to make appointments to see physicians today. Instead, patients should go to the nearest clinic and wait to be seen on a first-come, first-served basis, Donan-Drasner said.

Kaiser Permanente Hospital-Orange County in Anaheim and other Kaiser facilities will be open as usual, Donan-Drasner said.

Managers and physicians who were scheduled to be off today will be asked to fill the jobs of striking workers, ranging from working the grill at the hospital cafeteria to working as lab technicians.

Kaiser officials said some elective surgeries and other appointments that are not urgent are being canceled. A spokeswoman said patients who have not been notified that their appointments were canceled should show up as scheduled.

“We’re prepared for what comes along,” said Kaiser spokeswoman Kathleen Barco. “We’re going to do our best to handle this.” She added that the HMO would beef up security at its facilities, a move she called “a sensible and routine precaution.”

The union is billing the one-day walkout as a protest against what it calls unfair labor practices by Kaiser. Although the strike appears, at least for the time being, to avert a longer walkout, the union says it is part of a strategy that may at some point include a general strike.

Should that happen, it would mark the second time in three years that the union has struck. In 1990, Kaiser workers went out on a nine-day strike. At the time, Kaiser and union negotiators thought they had a deal, but the independent-minded union members overrode their own leadership’s recommendation that they accept Kaiser’s offer.

This time, Maliniak said, the union is shying away from a general strike because the HMO profits when its employees do not come to work. Kaiser collects payments from subscribers in advance, and thus would earn money during a long-term walkout by banking the salaries of absent employees.

The union is seeking 5%-a-year raises over the next three years, plus other concessions. Early Monday morning, after a weekend of negotiating, Kaiser made its final offer--a raise of 3% for the first year and lump sum bonuses ranging from $300 to $600 in the second and third years, plus increases in shift differentials for nighttime work.

Now, each side says it is up to the other to present a new proposal.

“We’re always willing to hear from the union in terms of proposals, but we have put our offer on the table and we feel it’s a good offer, and we are really hoping the employees will say yes to it,” Barco said. “If they reject this, they need to come back with some sort of proposal and we’ll talk to them.”

Countered Maliniak: “We don’t see it that way at all. We’re ready when they come back with some serious contract proposals. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Serious bargaining has yet to even begin.”

While union officials will not disclose their full strategy, they ran newspaper advertisements earlier this month in which they threatened to encourage Kaiser members to join other health care plans--an action that Barco said would be tantamount to “biting off their noses to spite their faces.”

Barco said the HMO, which lost 33,000 members last year and is expected to suffer another membership decline this year, is trying to reduce costs as the health care marketplace grows more competitive. But union officials, pointing to Kaiser’s $290 million in earnings in 1992, say the giant HMO can afford the raises.

“They’re making money hand over fist,” said Maliniak.

Times staff writer Leslie Berkman contributed to this story.