1,100 workers at Tri-Cities’ largest hospital plan 8-day strike
Technology and service employees at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland, Wash., notified the hospital Friday that they plan an eight-day strike starting Aug. 20.
Service Employee International Union Healthcare 1199NW represents about 1,100 workers in dozens of job categories at Kadlec, but not nurses.
The strike would include workers at both the Richland hospital and Kadlec’s freestanding emergency room off Highway 395 in Kennewick.
Kadlec released a statement at the close of business Friday saying that it is well-prepared for a strike and that all facilities would remain open and all services would continue.
It has contracted with a staffing agency, which is standard practice for hospitals during strikes, it said.
Kadlec workers’ last three-year contract expired at the end of 2023 and employees have not received a pay increase this year.
Months of bargaining
The decision to strike was made after a bargaining session Thursday that proved a tipping point after eight months of negotiations, said Kenia Escobar, director of communications for the union.
The union has been asking for Kadlec employees to be paid the same wages as employees at Swedish Health Services in Seattle, which Kadlec points out is one of the most expensive sites in Washington state.
Both Kadlec and Swedish are part of the Providence health system.
Kadlec said that it has offered an average 16% wage increase for caregivers, with additional increases over the next three years.
“Kadlec is disappointed the union has not accepted our competitive offers, has presented unrealistic counterproposals and has chosen to strike,” the hospital said in a statement.
It said the union wants an average wage increase of more than 40%.
But a member of the bargaining team who spoke with the Tri-City Herald on SEIU’s behalf disagreed with Kadlec’s numbers, saying the average wage increase proposed by the hospital would not be 16%.
Some employees would get only a 34-cent-per-hour wage increase on pay now as low as 60 cents above minimum wage, said Thelma Hedrick, an X-ray and ultrasound technologist at the Kadlec free-standing emergency room.
“We have people not able to pay their bills,” she said.
The Kadlec union is unusual, she said, in that it includes both technologists like herself and other employees such as food service and janitorial workers.
The proposed wage increases for technologists “are somewhat decent,” but proposed wages are not being raised enough for other workers, she said.
Turnover has been high as employees leave to take other medical facility jobs that pay better, including in Prosser and Sunnyside, and recruitment of new workers has been difficult, she said.
At Kadlec, executives are paid wages comparable to Swedish Health Services and in some cases more, Hedrick said.
At another Providence hospital, St. Peter Hospital in Olympia a contract agreement has been reached with higher pay than what has been offered by Kadlec, she said.
SEIU prepared cost of living comparisons, showing that the same groceries purchased at Safeway in the Tri-Cities and Seattle are more expensive in the Tri-Cities, and other costs have climbed in the Tri-Cities, she said.
Kadlec said it respects employees’ rights to be part of a union and give notice to strike. However, strikes do not make progress toward settling contracts.
That must be done at the bargaining table, and Kadlec looks forward to returning to negotiations after the strike ends, it said.
SEIU Healthcare workers at Kadlec include:
Certified nursing assistants, who bathe and feed patients
Janitors and cleaners
Sterile processing technicians who assemble medical and surgical supplies
Operating room technicians who support surgeons
Nutrition and dietary workers
Technologists
Respiratory therapists
Workers in dozens of other job classifications
