KAISER NURSES END HISTORIC STRIKE AGAINST $76 BILLION HEALTH CARE GIANT, RETURN TO WORK WITH HARD-WON PATIENT SAFETY PROTECTIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, February 24 2026

CONTACT: press@unacuhcp.org

**Strike photos and videos here, courtesy of UNAC/UHCP**

 

KAISER NURSES END HISTORIC STRIKE AGAINST $76 BILLION HEALTH CARE GIANT, RETURN TO WORK WITH HARD-WON PATIENT SAFETY PROTECTIONS

 

LOS ANGELES — UNAC/UHCP nurses and health care workers are back on the job. After weeks on the picket line fighting for the patients and communities they serve, members of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP)  have returned to their posts with something invaluable in hand: real, enforceable wins for patient safety.

This fight was never just about wages. This was a fight over what kind of health care organization Kaiser Permanente intends to be — and whether its health care professionals would be empowered to hold it accountable.

In this fight, the union was up against a $76 billion health care giant that chose to walk away from the bargaining table, use stonewalling tactics, and weaponize its own wage proposals against the very workers who deliver its care every single day. Kaiser attempted to use money as a hammer — dangling compensation while refusing to engage meaningfully on the staffing and safety issues that RNs and health care professionals have been raising for years.

The union accepted the 21.5% across-the-board wage increase because every UNAC/UHCP member deserves to see that improvement — and because it is part of a broader package that includes real gains on safe staffing, recruitment, and retention.

UNAC/UHCP did not arrive at this number easily. Kaiser’s own tactics — walking away from the table, refusing to bargain in good faith, and filing delay after delay — made it necessary to lock these gains in and protect them in enforceable contract language.

Four weeks on the picket line was not something 31,000 health care workers did lightly. They did it because Kaiser wasn’t moving, and their patients weren’t getting what they deserved. UNAC/UHCP stood together and held the line. Wages were never the only thing on the table. The union has been fighting — and will continue to fight — for the protections that shape patient care and professional integrity.

Union members fought for their patients. Here’s a sample of what they won:

• Your nurse is actually your nurse: the union fought to end “paper staffing” — Kaiser should not be able to count charge nurses or break relief nurses toward patient ratios. When you’re in a Kaiser facility, the nurse assigned to you should be there for you.
• Dangerous staffing gaps deserve real solutions: a new internal nurse registry to deploy registered nurses to cover short-staffed units — including in the middle of the night, when it matters most.
• Every safeguard protected — and then some: preservation of every existing protection, even while Kaiser pushed to weaken ratio enforcement and claw back hard-earned rights. The union also fought to extend safer staffing standards into clinic and ambulatory settings for health care professionals, because the fight for patient safety doesn’t stop at the hospital door.

Kaiser chose the wrong priorities — and nurses held them accountable

Let’s be clear about what happened here. Kaiser Permanente — a $76 billion health care giant — chose to walk away from the bargaining table. It filed delay after delay. It refused to bargain in good faith over the staffing issues that its own health care professionals were raising as patient safety emergencies.

When Kaiser finally presented wage numbers, it did so as a weapon — framing its “maximum offer” not as a good-faith effort to retain health care professionals who deliver its care, but as leverage to shut down any further conversation about staffing, workload, and safety. Kaiser’s position was, in essence: take the money and stop asking about the patients.

UNAC/UHCP President Charmaine S. Morales, RN, made the stakes clear from the beginning: This strike was about Kaiser’s unfair labor practices and its refusal to bargain in good faith on the staffing issues that put patients at risk every single day.

“We are back inside Kaiser facilities today. Our eyes are open and our commitment to our patients has never been stronger,” Morales said. “We went up against a $76 billion organization that tried to silence us with money while ignoring safety. We didn’t let that happen. We won real protections for our patients, and we will enforce every single one of them. Kaiser now knows that this union is not going away, and that the health care professionals who keep this system running will always put patients first.”

Kaiser’s own spokesperson called this strike “unnecessary’’ and accused UNAC/UHCP members of using patients as pawns. The record shows the opposite: it was union members who stood up for patients — who refused to accept a contract that preserved unsafe conditions — while Kaiser focused on its balance sheet.

Caregivers are back inside — and they are watching

Returning to work is not the end of this fight. It is a new phase.

UNAC/UHCP members carry with them everything they fought for on the picket line — not just the contract language, but the conviction that patients deserve better than what Kaiser had been delivering. The wins secured mean nothing if they are not enforced. And enforcement began the moment caregivers walked back through those doors.

UNAC/UHCP members will be vigilant. They will document every ratio violation. They will escalate every unsafe staffing gap through the new pathways they fought to create. They will not hesitate to use every tool their new contracts will provide.

Bargaining continues at local tables. Final contract language is still being completed. Patients will feel the difference: in safer staffing, in employees who have the structure and support to do their jobs, and in a health care workforce that refuses to accept “good enough” when lives are on the line.

For additional press information, please visit: unacuhcp.org/presscenter

###

United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) represents more than 40,000 registered nurses and healthcare professionals in California and Hawaii, including optometrists; pharmacists; physical, occupational and speech therapists; case managers; nurse midwives; social workers; clinical lab scientists; physician assistants and nurse practitioners; hospital support and technical staff. UNAC/UHCP is affiliated with the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees (NUHHCE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO.