July 25, 2023; Stockton, CA, USA; Kaiser Permanente employee Yazmin Tarakciglo holds up a sign while walking a picket line outside of the hospital on West Lane near Hammer Lane in Stockton on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. The employees are in contract negotiations with Kaiser Permanente to get more staffing. About 300 Stockton employees joined others from Manteca and Vacaville on Tuesday, and those from Modesto and south Sacramento on Wednesday. Mandatory Credit: Clifford Oto-USA TODAY NETWORK
Los Angeles, California – Dozens of nurses in Northern California took their protest public Tuesday, rallying outside Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics to call out recent layoffs and sound alarms about the future of their profession.
From San Francisco to Sacramento, nurses in scrubs and red union shirts formed picket lines in front of 22 Kaiser facilities. It wasn’t a strike—Kaiser’s clinics and hospitals remained open—but an informational picket led by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), which represents nearly 25,000 Kaiser nurses. Their goal was to get ahead of what they see as troubling shifts in healthcare, from job cuts to the growing use of artificial intelligence.
“Nothing can replace the hands of a nurse,” said Eric Newsom, an ICU nurse who joined the demonstration. “We are trained to take care of you. We’re trained to take care of your family members.”
Union leaders say the layoffs don’t just hurt workers, they put pressure on patients and care teams. They also accuse Kaiser of moving too quickly to adopt technologies that could undermine—not strengthen—care. Some of the protest signs explicitly warned against what they called “untested AI in healthcare.”
“If AI is to come into our jobs, we want it to improve the time we have with you, not to take the time away,” Newsom said.
Patients themselves had mixed reactions. Mariliz Romero De Aquino, who receives care at Kaiser, said she could see how technology might help streamline certain tasks. Still, she believes nurses must be the ones guiding its use. “I think the nurses can guide them [with] what is going to be helpful for their work,” she said.
Kaiser pushed back hard on the union’s framing. In a statement, the healthcare giant called the pickets a publicity move, not a fight over patient care. “This one-day informational picketing at our Los Angeles Medical Center is part of a national campaign,” the statement read. “We refute any allegations that this picketing is about concerns of care quality and service at Kaiser Permanente—CNA is simply using this day of action as an opportunity to gain visibility for their union.”
The statement also emphasized that Kaiser meets or exceeds state staffing rules and recently inked what it described as a generous four-year contract with CNA in 2022. That deal, Kaiser said, provides “competitive wages, excellent benefits, valuable professional opportunities and a work environment committed to [nurses’] well-being and safety.”
But the union is already looking ahead. With contract negotiations scheduled for next year, nurses say the pickets were not only about layoffs and AI—they were about setting the stage for a fight to protect their work and their patients. “We hope a fair deal can be reached,” a union spokesperson said.
