More than 75,000 nurses, pharmacists and other employees of the Kaiser Permanente health system began a walkout Wednesday in the largest single health care strike action in recent U.S. history.
The workers went on strike after their contract expired and the union was unable to reach a new agreement with Kaiser on pay and headcount increases.
To minimize the impact on patients, Kaiser said it would hire temporary workers to fill some vacancies, but delay some appointments when necessary and direct certain patients to other pharmacies.
The industrial action, which is expected to last three days, follows strikes by autoworkers and Hollywood writers, adding workplaces such as hospitals, pharmacies and clinics to the list of industries affected by industrial action this year.
Kaiser Health System serves 12.7 million members in 40 hospitals and more than 620 medical clinics, most of them on the West Coast but also in Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland and Virginia. Kaiser has about 213,000 non-physician employees.
Workers in Washington, D.C., and Virginia plan to strike for one day, while workers in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state will strike for three days, a union spokesman said.
The strike is the largest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting such data in 1993.