Kaiser Permanente workers may soon be on strike. I support them. God knows, they deserve just compensation for the work they do every day, and especially the work they've done for the past 2 years of this nightmarish pandemic.

Of course, when somebody opens with a statement like that, everyone knows there's a "BUT" coming, and here's mine: Kaiser is an HMO. That means that if I need healthcare, I need to get it from a Kaiser facility, or I need to pay full price. Because this is AMERIKKA, getting healthcare that isn't covered by my insurance will be a huge burden on my household (which is all on Kaiser) and without going into unnecessary detail, the chances of me/a family member needing at least one significant medical procedure while the strike is in progress are close to 100%.

So I wanted to solicit the opinions of the Chapo community. Especially if there are Kaiser employees here who may be striking soon. I can't ask what I should do, but what would you do? At what point does personal hardship make it acceptable to cross a picket line?

Feel free to share other thoughts about the upcoming Kaiser strike, too.

edit: an additional wrinkle to this, that I just thought of: Would putting off care during the strike actually deprive Kaiser of revenue? They're already getting my insurance premium every month. Would it hurt them more to get AS MUCH CARE AS POSSIBLE while a strike is happening? Obviously that's insane but I had to post it anyway.

  • disco [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I mean, I usually take it to mean "If Burger Shack is on strike, don't eat at burger shack" too, but that's very different from something like "don't go to the hospital"

    But that does seem to be the consensus.

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It depends on what the striking workers ask for — often they don't call for boycotts alongside their strikes because an emptying warehouse of goods puts pressure on the bosses to settle with the union so as to not lose out on potential sales due to lack of product. For something like a restaurant it does make sense to have a boycott simultaneously because people not eating there means no profit while all of the raw ingredients go bad. Best to listen to what the workers are calling for.