Hundreds of health care workers are expected to gather Wednesday at Kaiser Permanente‘s Baldwin Park facility to protest the provider’s alleged plan to lay off 300 call center employees and move their jobs to other areas of California where the pay is lower.

The SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West union, which represents more than 55,000 Kaiser employees in California, including 2,149 at Kaiser Baldwin Park, claims the health care organization is planning to lay off those employees plus another 160 call center workers in Woodland Hills and 192 more at its Los Angeles Medical Center.

The nonprofit plans to move the jobs to Riverside, Fontana and San Diego, the union said, where the positions would pay $2 per hour less.

Kaiser takes issue with the union’s estimation of employees affected.

A cut in pay and outsourcing

Jobs moved elsewhere “would go to the United Steel Workers Local 7600 union,” SEIU spokesman Sean Wherley said. “Jobs with our union start at $21.83, and the starting pay with that union is $19.70 an hour.”

Wherley said Kaiser also plans to outsource its pharmacy warehouse operations in several cities to a private, non-union company. That, he said, will result in 81 job losses in North Hollywood, 61 in Downey, 55 in Oakland and 39 in Livermore.

“I don’t know that Kaiser has identified the company yet,” he said. “But when you farm out this kind of thing to a private business, they won’t be invested in the company. The pay will be lower, the turnover will be higher and there will be less of an understanding that you’re serving patients.”

Kaiser responds

Kaiser said SEIU’s claims are overstated.

“The union’s claims that we have announced 700 layoffs at our call centers is simply not true,” the company said in a statement, adding that layoffs for the pharmacy outsourcing transition have yet to be determined. “The exact number of positions affected by this decision has not yet been determined, so the union’s claims are premature and may in fact be wrong. We will be scheduling more sessions with our union partners over the next few months to fully address the effects of this decision. As we determine the potential impact to employees, plans will be finalized and shared with them.”

Kaiser said it has determined that an external pharmacy storage and distribution network would be the best option to meet the current and future needs of its members.

Not ready to retire

Corrine Martin, who works as an appointment clerk at the Kaiser Baldwin Park call center, isn’t exactly happy with the company’s plans. She’s been there nearly 19 years.

“This is my job security and I didn’t plan to retire yet,” the 64-year-old Rosemead resident said. “This would be devastating for me. I’m the first contact person callers deal with. I deal with their concerns and their illnesses and direct them to the right place. If they replace me with a machine or someone who doesn’t know what to do … they’ll say, ‘Well, let me look into it,’ and service will suffer.”

The Baldwin Park protest will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday and is one of 32 planned across California between Feb. 14 and March 15, SEIU said.

Kaiser said the union has a contract in place and that Kaiser and SEIU are currently not in contract negotiations. And the protests, it said, won’t hamper the health care network’s ability to provide service to its members.

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