Kaiser Nurses to Strike Over Patient Care

Kaiser Permanente’s 7,500 registered nurses plan to strike today at the company’s 45 hospitals and clinics in Northern California to protest what they say is deteriorating patient care. The California Nurses Assn., which represents the nurses, said other union employees of the Oakland-based plan’s facilities will join the walkout, bringing the total number of protesters to about 26,000. The groups charge that the nation’s largest nonprofit health maintenance organization has been sacrificing patient care in its recent national expansion. “We think by calling a strike, they are abandoning the patients they say they [are] advocates [for],” said Kaiser spokeswoman Lila Petersen. Nurse managers and nurses brought from Kaiser’s Southern California facilities will cover for the strikers, she said.