More than 1,000 RNs across California to recover millions in stolen wages

Registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente hospitals across California are celebrating a historic victory against wage theft committed by their employer today. California Nurses Association (CNA), which represents more than 25,000 nurses at 22 Kaiser facilities, successfully won an arbitration agreement that mandates Kaiser pay stolen wages dating back to at least 2021, potentially totalling a sum in the tens of millions of dollars to be paid out to more than 1,000 nurses. 

“Unfortunately, Kaiser wants to normalize stealing from nurses,” said Michelle Gutierrez Vo, RN in adult/family medicine at Kaiser Fremont Medical Center and a president of CNA. “They changed their payroll system, messed it up, and let the mistake steal millions of dollars from nurses. When we called them on it, their fancy lawyers fought us tooth and nail for every single dollar. Nurses wouldn’t take no for an answer, and we won back millions of dollars in stolen wages, and we went above and beyond Kaiser’s earlier attempts to settle for less.” 

CNA was first notified by Kaiser nurses several years ago of issues with wage theft following a change in Kaiser’s payroll system dating back to at least early 2021. Because the union does not have direct access to Kaiser’s payroll system, it took years of nurses working together to piece together the true scale and extent of the problem, which Kaiser repeatedly tried to minimize and obscure. CNA believes the final sum could total in the tens of millions.

Despite this victory, nurses remain outraged that Kaiser spent years and untold sums in legal expenses in their effort to avoid paying the wages they had stolen, which, while substantial, were still only a fraction of the organization’s billions of dollars in profits. It took years of nurse advocacy to force Kaiser to even admit that more than 1,000 nurses were being shorted on their pay.

“This entire experience has been a reminder for us that Kaiser would rather pay lawyers to fight nurses than pay nurses to take care of our patients,” said President Gutierrez Vo, RN. “It is another disgusting reminder of this company’s priorities. And, for us, it’s also another powerful reminder of what’s possible when nurses work together to demand what we’re owed from companies like Kaiser.”

CNA represents more than 25,000 registered nurses at 22 Kaiser facilities in California and is in active contract negotiations with the company. Nurses at Kaiser hospitals protested wage theft and other key bargaining issues at informational pickets held earlier this year.

California Nurses Association/National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the nation with more than 100,000 members in more than 200 facilities throughout California and more than 225,000 RNs nationwide.