The SEIU-UHW Kaiser Executive Board leaders are calling on our 37,000 SEIU-UHW Kaiser members in northern California to support Local 39 engineers in a second 24-hour sympathy strike starting at 7am Friday, December 17 through 7am on Saturday, December 18.
Kaiser has now dragged out the strike with the engineers for 13 weeks. This is cruel to our engineer colleagues and disrespectful to us all. The pandemic has only made Kaiser more profitable, but they want workers to have less:
- The engineers have fought for years to establish a prevailing wage that would pay engineers the same rate whether they work for the commercial real estate companies, Dignity Health, Sutter or Kaiser. Now Kaiser, who says they pay the best in the industry, wants to put the engineers on a path where, in just two years, they would be paid $4.75 an hour LESS in wages and retirement than other engineers in the area.
- Kaiser is offering the engineers only 3% in the first year, 2% in the second, and 2% in the third year plus a 1% bonus. These are lower wage increases than we’ve seen at Kaiser in decades. This aggressive assault on the engineers’ standard of living is an alarming sign of what we can expect at the bargaining table when we go to negotiations. If we don’t want this to be our package in two years, we need to support the engineers.
Starting Monday, Dec. 6 at 5pm through Friday, Dec. 10 at 5pm, SEIU-UHW members will have the opportunity to formally vote on another 24-hour sympathy strike in support of the Local 39 engineers. You can find more information on the sympathy strike by clicking here.
