Adrián Rocha. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
A group of unionized health care workers at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center hospital in Redwood City protested today outside the facility to demand better working conditions, adequate medical supplies, staffing and bonuses owed to workers despite the fact that the institution has earned about $6.4 billion in profits during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, according to the protesters.
The union group (Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions), which protested this morning and was led mainly by women, denounced through its spokesperson and hospital nutritionist, Stephanie Archie, that "throughout the Bay Area, the needs of the workers have not been respected so that they can take care of themselves and their families so that they can return and care for the hospital's patients".
Michele Kyles is a lab worker who has been working for 17 years and one of the reasons for participating in the protest and supporting the workers' demands, she says, is that "she wants to be treated fairly and for her co-workers to be treated equally."
Stephanie also denounced that the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center hospital has maintained the provision of the United States Department of Labor to grant 80 paid hours to workers who contract the disease, "but this has not been enough, since the disease does not develop equally in all patients and sometimes they need more time to recover from the COVID-19 disease; besides, this right is only for full-time workers".
"I have seen our colleagues come into conflict with each other, as many of them call in sick to assist patients so as not to be penalized by the medical institution and not to put their job at risk, but this situation puts other workers and the patients themselves at risk and that time is simply not enough," Stephanie commented.
The federal paid leave provisions established by the Department of Labor, effective December 31, 2020, are found in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act: Employee Paid Leave Rights; it states that full-time employees qualify for an 80-hour paid leave, while part-time workers qualify for paid leave for the total hours of a normal two-week workday.
