More than 2,500 Kaiser Permanente workers walked off the job Wednesday morning.
Nurses, social workers and other healthcare workers at 80 Southern California hospitals and clinics staged a 24-hour strike, beginning at 6:00 a.m.
Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center in Hollywood was among the locations where employees waving picket signs hit the streets.
The workers are fighting for safe staffing levels for nurses. They're also striking against a proposal to cut retirement and healthcare coverage. They say those cuts are unfair at a time when the company is seeing record profits.
“Kaiser executives are making more money than ever and are giving themselves huge raises, but they refuse to provide nurses with the staff we need to take care of our patients properly,” said Roxana Valadez, an RN in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Kaiser LAMC.
"Kaiser is becoming a worse and worse place to provide patient care and it won’t be long before skilled nurses no longer want to work for this employer."
