The health care workers union representing over 1,000 employees at Kaiser Permanente Fresno locations voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike if they don’t reach an agreement with the nonprofit healthcare provider by Sept. 30.

About 98% of the 60,000 Kaiser union workers across California approved a potential strike, according to a news release from Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West on Thursday morning.

“It’s been a lot of hard work and education, and I’m glad the majority of the membership was willing to step up,” said Fresno Kaiser employee and SEIU-UHW member Melanie Reno in a text to Fresnoland on Thursday. “But we still have a long fight ahead of us. And we have to show management that we mean what we say.”

She confirmed that roughly 1,500 workers from Kaiser Permanente Fresno locations would plan to join the work stoppage if it does indeed happen after the end of this month.

The soonest a strike could happen would be Oct. 1, union leadership told Fresnoland earlier this week.

Fresnoland reached out to Kaiser Permanente for comment.

This article first appeared on Fresnoland and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

About the Author

Julianna Morano is the labor and economy reporter at Fresnoland.

About Fresnoland

Fresnoland is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to making policy public.