SPOKANE, Wash. — Healthcare workers with Kaiser Permanente took to Riverfront Park Thursday night to rally for better wages and hours.
Rallies are being held across the state this week in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue and in Spokane.
Genevieve Green is taking part in the rally. She's worked in healthcare for 30 years and 5 years at Kaiser Permanente.
"We're short staffed, we're exhausted at the end of the day, we need our workforce to be on par to meet our patient needs every day," said Green.
Green says conversations about having these rallies started about two months ago, as the union gets closer to the end of its contract with Kaiser Permanente.
Green said, "We're going to fight for what we feel is right and to let the community know that we care about their their care, their health care and what what they get for treatment."
In a response to KREM 2, Kaiser Permanente said, "While all of health care continues to face ongoing shortages, we're taking aggressive actions to fill and hire more roles, and we're seeing improvements. We will continue these efforts, and we remain ready to collaborate to explore new and innovative ways to address these challenges."
Green says it's actually been worse since the pandemic.
"We're seeing more and more of our co workers leave for jobs at other places that either provide better hours or better wages, our providers are leaving because they're unhappy," said Green.
In general, there are more people leaving the health care industry post-COVID, so this is not specific to Kaiser Permanente.
Kaiser Permanente said in their statement its committed to bargaining in good faith to reach a fair and equitable agreement. The current contract ends in late October.
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