Thousands of US health care workers go on strike in multiple states over wages and staff shortages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Picketing began Wednesday morning at Kaiser Permanente hospitals as some 75,000 health care workers go on strike in Virginia, California and three other states over wages and staffing shortages, marking the latest major labor unrest in the United States. Kaiser Permanente is one of the country’s larger insurers and health care system operators, with 39 hospitals nationwide. “They’re not listening to the frontline health care workers,” said Mikki Fletchall, a licensed vocational nurse based in a Kaiser medical office in Camarillo, California. “I think coming out of the pandemic, health care workers have been completely burned out,” she said. Gavin Newsom a bill that would increase the minimum wage for the state’s 455,000 health care workers to $25 per hour over the next decade.