Bargaining table awaits for newly formed Kaiser residents union

Medical residents and fellows at Kaiser Permanente facilities in San Francisco and throughout Northern California said they are looking forward to negotiating what they argue are much-needed cost-of-living increases at the bargaining table after voting to unionize late last month .

The National Labor Relations Board on May 31 approved residents’ vote to join the Service International Employees Union-affiliated Committee of Interns and Residents, a CIR spokesperson told The Examiner.

The spokesperson said the tallied votes were 311-4 in favor of unionizing. Not all 450 residents and fellows received a mail-in ballot on time, the spokesperson said.

Now, representatives from each discipline at the eight medical centers — Sacramento, Modesto, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Clara, Santa Rosa and Vallejo — will be elected to represent the union when bargaining begins later this summer.

Kaiser Permanente was embroiled in a lengthy negotiation process with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents more than 85,000 Kaiser workers in California and other states, for the better part of last year . The two sides reached an agreement in October after a three-day strike of more than 75,000 Kaiser employees in what was the largest health care worker strike in U.S. history.

Residents said they are hopeful that their negotiations with the health care giant will be productive and successful.

“Before us unionizing, we were virtually the only people not unionized in Kaiser,” said Dr. Brandon Anderson, a second-year internal medicine resident at the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center. “I think there's a sense of hope that because of that long history of working with unions in general, there will be potentially a show of good faith.”

Kaiser Permanente officials told The Examiner in a statement that they share the newly formed union’s optimism.

“Kaiser Permanente respects the rights of our employees to choose to be represented by a union, and we have a strong record of working constructively with the unions that our employees elect to represent them,” the Kaiser statement said. “We look forward to working constructively with the CIR-SEIU going forward.”

Anderson said the union’s primarily concerned with working conditions and salary increases.

“Residents work really, really long hours and often we don't get any days off,” he said. “On top of that, our pay is very low.”

Residents typically make between $60,000 and $80,000 a year, according to the CIR spokesperson, which in the Bay Area can be difficult to manage. Anderson said that, compounded with the demands of a resident’s schedule, can be challenging.

“Being in the most expensive place to live in the country, it's very difficult to manage all those expectations while working sometimes 60 to 80 hours a week, often, six days a week,” he said.

Dr. Berneen Bal, a third-year psychiatry resident at the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center, said she and her colleagues have also felt the rising cost of living squeeze their income in recent years.

Along with wage increases, unionized residents are hoping for “improvements for benefits as well,” Bal said. “A lot of people are advocating for things like fertility benefits, increased food stipends, housing stipends, especially as the cost of living continues to increase.”

Bal said that in an internal survey they conducted last year, 50% of the 132 participants said they spent between $2,000 and $3,000 a month on rent or mortgage payments.

“Which is effectively half or more than half of our salary just towards that,” she said. “Then you factor in things like groceries, gas, child care, medical expenses and it becomes unsustainable pretty quickly.”

After two years of working to unionize, Bal and Anderson said they feel confident now that this moment has arrived.

“Unionization is really the only way to leverage our collective power and our voice,” Anderson said. “Since we're taking care of most of the patients in the hospital, and doing most of the care that the hospital provides, it would be greatly beneficial if we had at least some say in how things are conducted.”