LOS ANGELES — Some 31,000 Kaiser Hospital nurses and other health care workers in California and Hawaii, organized by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, have been on strike since Jan. 26. Over 3,000 pharmacy technicians, members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, joined the strike Feb. 9, expanding what is now the largest health care shutdown in the U.S.
When Militant worker-correspondents visited the picket line at the West Los Angeles Kaiser hospital, strikers were chanting, “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Corporate greed has got to go” and “Kaiser, Kaiser, you’re no good. Treat the workers as you should.”
“Every Alliance union has rejected Kaiser’s effort to divide us and end the national agreement,” a UFCW strike update reported. The Alliance of Health Care Unions is a coalition of unions representing health care workers at Kaiser hospitals. “Kaiser wrote to every local union proposing local bargaining on national issues. Every Alliance union told Kaiser no.”
Kim Mullen, a nurse at Kaiser’s South Bay Medical Center and a union negotiator, told local media outlet LAist that on a short-staffing day there aren’t enough nurses and other health care workers to cover the number of stroke victims on their ward.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest “not-for-profit” health chains, serving 12.6 million people at 600 medical offices and 40 hospitals.
Kaiser raked in $7.9 billion in net income in the first three quarters of 2025, building up a $66 billion surplus.
A video of Kaiser strikers on the union’s social media shows strikers sending their solidarity to fellow nurses on strike in New York City. Some 15,000 nurses, members of the New York State Nurses Association, have been on strike there since Jan. 12.
Two of the three hospital chains — Montefiore and Mount Sinai — signed tentative contracts with their nurses Feb. 9. Nurses at the third, New York-Presbyterian, remain on the picket line.
“The strike has been good for the nurses, good for the union,” Melbourne, a nurse for 14 years at Montefiore Hospital, told the Militant. “We got more by standing together and fighting. We showed other workers that it’s good to have a union and that we’re the real patient advocates.”
Sara Lobman in New York contributed to this article.