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.
no healthcare worker's strike ever asks people not to seek care during the strike. get the care you need.
"Don't cross the picket line" generally pertains to Scabs and not to customers — as long as you're not trying to get a job there you're fine to go and get the care you need
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.
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.
I'm unsure if this will be the case, but it's not unheard of for striking workers in critical industries like healthcare or public transit to refuse to accept any money in exchange for services.
they're not paid at the point of service so that doesn't work here. Kaiser has already been paid and are contractually obligated to deliver the service. the strike may put them in violation of their contracts, but that depends on people not receiving care, which generally workers in this industry will seek to minimize (do no harm).
