The Brief

Health care workers at hundreds of Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical facilities across the U.S. walked off the job on Wednesday morning, in an effort to ramp up pressure on their employer to fix a staffing shortage that has intensified since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 75,000 workers — including nurses, emergency department technicians, pharmacists and hundreds of others — went on strike in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

It is the biggest health care strike in U.S. history, according to the unions.

Kaiser, headquartered in Oakland, California, is one of the largest nonprofit health care providers in the United States, serving nearly 13 million patients. Most Kaiser workers who have walked off the job will be on strike for three days, until Saturday morning — except those in Virginia and Washington D.C., who will be on strike for 24 hours.

What this means for patients

The health care provider has said its hospitals and emergency departments will remain open throughout the strike, staffed by physicians and other staff. It said it is onboarding professionals who will service in critical care roles during the strike.

Kaiser has warned patients that non-emergency and elective services may be rescheduled. The organization is expanding its network of pharmacy locations to include community pharmacies, to ensure patients can access medication in the event that outpatient pharmacies temporarily close. Inpatient pharmacies at Kaiser hospitals will stay open.

About 60% of Kaiser employees, including doctors, will still be working throughout the strike, according to the organization.

Short-staffing crisis

These health care professionals are the latest group of crucial workers to strike over work conditions and pay this year, after the Hollywood writers and the ongoing United Auto Workers strike, among others.

Their walkout is driven by a short-staffing crisis that workers say has led to tough working conditions that make it increasingly difficult to retain Kaiser employees, while also simultaneously leading to a deterioration in the quality of care for Kaiser's patients.

About 11% of union positions were vacant in April of this year, according to Kaiser data obtained by the unions.

"Health care workers choose this profession because it's a passion for them. It's a calling," said Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. "And folks don't feel comfortable staying at jobs where they don't feel like they can give the best patient care possible."

The unions allege Kaiser has engaged in unfair labor practices by refusing to bargain in good faith to solve the staffing crisis. Kaiser denies these allegations.

Why workers say they've been let down

Kaiser has asked workers to reject calls to walk off the job to prevent harm to patients.

But employees like Brooke El-Amin, who has worked at Kaiser for 21 years, say patient care is already suffering due to staffing shortages. The goal of the strike is to put pressure on Kaiser to improve patient care in the long-run.

"I don't want to strike," El-Amin said. "But I feel like Kaiser is already letting down our patients — they're already letting down the employees."

Pharmacists and optomestrists in Washington D.C. and Virginia were the first to launch the strike at 6 a.m. local time Wednesday morning, followed by workers in Colorado and on the West Coast.

Dozens of Kaiser employees, energized by their union's momentum, joined the picket line at Kaiser's Springfield Medical Center in Virginia soon after the strike began.

Kaiser clinical pharmacist Keyani Adigun joins her union's picket line outside the Kaiser Permanente Springfield Medical Center in Virginia, on Wednesday, Oct. 4 2023.

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Danielle Kaye

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NPR

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Keyani Adigun, a clinical pharmacist in Washington D.C., said she struggled throughout the pandemic to keep up with patient demands, as colleagues left Kaiser in droves.

And she said her employer still isn't providing enough resources — more than three years after COVID-19 hit the U.S.

"I hope that Kaiser leadership hears our voices," Adigun said, before joining the picket line. "The harder we work, the less resources we start to see."

Workers' contract expired without a new one in place

The collective bargaining agreement for employees represented by a coalition of unions expired on September 30 without a new agreement in place. The unions and Kaiser executives are still far apart on key sticking points, including wages, despite progress on issues such as outsourcing and subcontracting protections during talks over the weekend.

The two sides reached a tentative agreement on Monday on a 40% increase to an education fund, that will support additional training for employees, according to the SEIU-UHW union in California.

But the coalition is asking for a pay raise of nearly 25% for all of its members along with better benefits, such as medical coverage for retirees. With better pay and work conditions, the unions say, more people would be incentivized to stay at Kaiser. It would also attract newer workers — all of which would help alleviate the staffing shortage.

So far, Kaiser has countered with raises ranging from 12.5-16% over four years. Kaiser also said in a statement that it's close to reaching its goal of hiring 10,000 more people in union roles by the end of 2023 to fill vacancies.

The organization stressed that staffing shortages and burnout are issues affecting the entire healthcare industry — not just Kaiser. It also said that its compensation and benefits packages are better than most.

"The people of Kaiser Permanente have faced down the pandemic better than most frontline workers because we started from a different place," Kaiser said.

Lucas said Kaiser's commitment to ramping up hiring is a step in the right direction. But she said the health care provider isn't taking into account the thousands of workers who keep leaving, adding that Kaiser needs to raise wages substantially to give people a reason to stay.

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says playgoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and a psychic friend says she has a name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult. I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there,” Kalbeitzer said.

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“Like it’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’” O’Brien recounted, “And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer. I really wish I could. How wonderful would that be to be able to?’”

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“I think that how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences,” he said.

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

The park is expected to remain open during construction.

Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

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