You can’t miss what resembles a makeshift campsite at the northeast corner of the busy intersection at Bicentennial Way and Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa.
It’s been there five weeks and counting. When you slowly drive by or stop for a closer look, as I did, it’s clear this is far from a recreational experience. As the sign hanging on front of one of two tents states, “Engineering on strike.”
The protagonists are the stationary and biomedical engineers employed by Kaiser Permanente, the big California hospital operator and one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health care providers…
— ThePressDemocrat - 22oct2021
This Santa Rosa picket line is one of two dozen across the state for members of the Stationary Engineers Local 39 of the International Union of Operating Engineers who walked off the job Sept. 17 after their Kaiser Permanente contract expired with no new contract in place.
As a strike, it’s a first for Local 39, a small bargaining unit of women and men who keep the Kaiser buildings and medical equipment running properly.
And it’s 24/7.
They’ve got what one picketer called their own shanty town, a little cluster of tents supplying round-the-clock basic needs: water and other drinks, fruit, candy, snacks, a rolldown door on the main tent with a heater inside for the night shift since the weather turned colder.,, Morale is good in part because supporters sometimes bring water or coffee, even hamburgers on occasion.
One striker is George Ortiz, with his 4-year-old daughter happily enjoying pre-Halloween candy. Ortiz is a nearly 18-year stationary engineer, whose parents came to California from Guatemala. He remembers going to the south San Franciso picket lines in the 1980s with his mom, then a Kaiser receptionist. His older daughter is 9, and he considers it important both children know firsthand that sometimes a union has to take a stand. as organized labor trying to win a fair contract from management.
...They aren’t alone. Walkouts at U.S. hospitals have increased after 19 months of the grueling public health crisis. Frontline health care workers have been pushed to the brink. So far this year, there have been at least 30 strikes across the country involving health care workers, according to a labor action tracker at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations….
More sources on this and other KP workers’ strikes: abc7news.com ■ timesofsandiego.com ■ oaklandnorth.net ■ hawaiinewsnow.com ■ jacobinmag.com ■ stateofreform.com/ ■ dk tag KaiserPermanente ■