To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
November 23, 2021
by Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
30,000 plus Kaiser Permanente nurses and other workers in 350 facilities in California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, had planned to strike November 15, but the leadership of the Alliance of Health Care Unions agreed to a four-year tentative contract with the Kaiser administration. The workers will vote on whether or not to ratify the agreement over the next few weeks. (1)
Shortly after this strike was averted a larger number of Kaiser Permanente medical workers went on two separate, massive support strikes for the striking stationary engineers who were already out on strike against Kaiser.
“Over 60,000 members of other unions representing Kaiser Permanente workers throughout northern California held solidarity strikes Nov. 17 and 18, in solidarity with members of Stationary Engineers Local 39, who have been walking picket lines since their contract expired in mid-September.
“On Thursday, more than 40,000 workers belonging to SEIU-UHW, OPEIU Local 29, and IFPTE Local 20 stayed off the job at 21 Kaiser facilities in northern California. Among them were optometrists, licensed vocational nurses and certified nursing assistants, surgical and pharmacy technicians, housekeepers, and workers in hundreds of other positions.
“They were followed on Friday by some 20,000 registered nurses, members of the California Nurses Association, and nearly 2,000 mental health clinicians represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers.” (2)
The mental health workers are on the verge of striking for their own issues, mainly staffing and bilingual staffers and staffers of color. (3)
The stationary engineers have been on strike for nine weeks
demanding higher wages. Their wages are among the lowest in the region
for their work (4) They are also “fighting against attacks on
real wages and pensions, understaffing and attempts by Kaiser to more
easily force engineers to work across county lines.” (5)
These two large-scale sympathy strikes bode well for the contract struggle of the medical workers, who will vote in coming weeks.
When the Permanente medical workers' contract came up October 1st,
the administration had proposed that the workers accept a two-tier wage
system, in which new workers come in and make a much lower wage than
veterans, for a long time or permanently. The workers had declared this
the main target of their proposed strike. According to reports, it was
taken off the table, a big gain for the workers. (6)
The two-tier system is a target of a number of strikes in the continuing strike wave that has been christened “Striketober.” Workers at Kellogg and John Deere, currently on strike, are battling two-tier and Nabisco strikers earlier had a partial victory against it. The two-tier wage and benefit system turns worker against worker, one making less and having less benefits such as healthcare, vacations and pensions than the other while doing the same work. It has plagued large workforces such as auto and postal, who have fought against it but not yet eliminated it.
Alliance union leaders have not released details of the Permanente tentative contract, apparently fearing publicity. However, wage increases reportedly fall behind the rate of inflation. (7) More details will come out and the voting will tell.
Among these results, reported by Bloomberg, are the following:
Kaiser Permanente cannot easily cry broke to fend off the workers'
wage demands. “Workers argue that Kaiser has largely shook off the
upheaval [of the pandemic – TH]. Kaiser’s annual operating revenue
reached $88.7 billion in 2020, compared with $47.9 billion in 2011,
according to its annual report. Union leaders say the health s.ystem
earned $6 million a day in profit during the pandemic.” (9)
1) Sarah Holder, “Kaiser Permanente Reaches Union Pact, Averting Strike, Bloomberg, Nov. 20, 2021. And “Kaiser Reaches Tentative Agreement With Unions; NorCal Outpatient
Pharmacies Could Still Be Affected”, SFist*.
2) Marilyn Bechtel, “Nurses, mental health therapists and other Kaiser Permanente health workers strike to support stationary engineers”, Nov. 22, 2021, People’s World.
3) Ibid, People’s World.
4) Ibid, People's World.
5) Evan Winters, “20,000 Northern California nurses and mental health staff conduct second 24-hour sympathy for Kaiser Permanente engineers”, November 20, 2021, WSWS.
6) Ibid, Bloomberg.
7) Don McIntosh, “Kaiser Permanente strike called off”, Nov. 17, 2021, nwLaborPress.org.
8) Ibid, Bloomberg.
9) Ibid, BloombIbid, Bloomberg.erg. <>
by Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
A week ago, on Tuesday, November 16, 150 workers in Irvine, California, held a spirited protest outside their workplace, the video-game giant Activision, against the vicious sexual harassment and abuse prevalent on their job and instigated and concealed by their CEO, Bobby Kotick. The workers demanded Kotick's resignation. (1)
The workers were outraged at the revelations in a Wall Street Journal article published that morning, which detailed Kotick's suppression of facts about extensive sexual crimes, even including alleged rapes, from the board of the company. Yet the board is supporting Kotick and is unlikely to call for his resignation. (2) Apart from the board, a worker stated, “Nobody actually likes these guys, across the company.” (3)
“The action came together quickly on Tuesday. More than 150 people gathered outside Activision Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California, many carrying signs with phrases like 'NO CONFIDENCE IN KOTICK' and 'UNACCOUNTABLE CORPORATE BUREAUCRATS ARE DRIVING THE BEST EMPLOYEES OUT OF ACTIVISION BLIZZARD.' Additional employees joined the protest remotely by stopping their work for the day. 'We will not be silenced until Bobby Kotick has been replaced as CEO,' tweeted the Activision Blizzard King Workers Alliance, a group of employee activists who helped organize the walkout.”
It is the second time that the workers have called for Kotick's resignation over this issue.
“The first occurred in July, after California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed an explosive 29-page lawsuit against the company. It alleged that women did not receive fair compensation and were unable to advance on par with male counterparts, but it also contained hair-raising allegations of abuse. In September, the company agreed to pay $18 million to settle a separate workplace harassment and discrimination complaint from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also began investigating the company. Activision Blizzard has received 500 current and former employees’ allegations of workplace bias, misconduct, or abuse since late July, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
…………………………………………………………………...
“The report also recounts multiple accusations involving the CEO himself. Kotick allegedly harassed an assistant in 2006, including saying in a voicemail that he’d have her killed. A spokesperson for Kotick says he apologized at the time and regrets his tone. In 2007, a flight attendant on a private jet he co-owned sued Kotick after she was fired for complaining about the pilot’s alleged sexual harassment. Kotick settled with the attendant and paid her $200,000, according to The Journal. A spokesperson for Kotick denied there was retaliation.”
But the workers see through this reactionary thug. “'I don’t know that anyone I know at the company actually thinks Bobby Kotick and his Trump-era goons have employees’ best interests at heart,' says one current Blizzard employee.” Several members of Kotick's board worked for George Bush's Homeland Security team and for the Trump administration.
In 2018 Kotick collected a paycheck 300 times the size of the median employee pay. This misogynist thug has conducted rounds of layoffs, the most recent in March of this year, when he was slated to receive $200 million in compensation.
Activison workers apparently do not have a union. It is not clear what kind of organization the Activision King Blizzard Workers Alliance is, but by mobilizing for the fight of all workers against the vicious oppression of women workers they are acting in the spirit of working-class unity and struggle. We strongly support them!
1) “Activision Blizzard Employees Are Done With CEO Bobby Kotich: As Kotick’s handling of alleged sexual misconduct draws headlines, workers staged their second walkout this year”, Wired, Nov. 16, 2021, https://www.wired.com/story/activision-blizzard-employees-done-with-ceo-bobby-kotick/.
2) Kirsten Grind, Ben Fritz, and Sarah E. Needleman, “Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant: Top executive didn’t inform board of some reports, including alleged rapes; company faces multiple regulatory investigations”, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 16, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-videogames-bobby-kotick-sexual-misconduct-allegations-11637075680.
3) Wired, ibid. All further quotes and information about Activision’s board or Kotick’s compensation is from this source. <>
(Picture: Kaiser Permanente solidarity strike https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/11/IMG_4422-1020x765.jpeg)
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