SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND health workers in five US states walked out on strike today over pay and staff shortages.

Pickets were held at Kaiser Permanente hospitals as the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions called three days’ strike action in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington and one day in Virginia and the country’s capital, Washington DC.

The strikers include nurses, home health aides and ultrasound sonographers, as well as technicians in radiology, X-ray, surgical, pharmacy and emergency departments. 

They comprise a third of the company’s workforce, though doctors are not striking. Kaiser Permanente — an “integrated managed care consortium” and one of the biggest healthcare providers in the United States — said it was drafting in agency workers to break the strikes, and that hospitals would remain open.

Unions wants a $25 (£20.50) an hour minimum wage and a four-year pay deal involving two years of 7 per cent raises and two of 6.25 per cent. 

The company is currently offering a $21-23 (£17.25-18.90) an hour minimum depending on location. A Bill in California setting a sector-wide $25-an-hour baseline has passed the legislature but awaits approval by Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.

They also want the company to address chronic understaffing, saying shortages are maintained to boost corporate profits while letting patients down.

California nurse Mikki Fletchall said Kaiser was “not listening to front-line health workers. We’re striking because of our patients — we don’t want to have to do it, but we will.”

Kaiser executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames said “our focus, for the dollars we bring in, are to keep them invested in value-based care” and defended its record, saying staff turnover was lower than at other US healthcare firms.

But she suggested she sympathised with health workers who were “completely burnt out” by the pandemic.

The US has been rocked by a wave of strikes over the past year, as workers demand a bigger slice of ballooning corporate profits. Industrial action has hit transport, entertainment, hospitality and famously the film industry.

Last week, President Joe Biden became the first sitting president to attend a picket line when he visited striking car manufacturing workers in Michigan, a show of support for unions contrasting to the cross-party hostility to strikes in Britain.