This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA.
At Kaiser there is a mystery to be solved – how can it be that experiences at Southern California and Northern California Kaiser are so different?
For Kaiser patients this could mean that transferring your Southern California Kaiser insurance while living in Northern California might be a nightmare. Accessing your account, especially Telehealth, sometimes becomes impossible, and not all the benefits are the same. Patients deserve equal access to care no matter their location.
Also, in Southern California, Kaiser healthcare workers are paid less and have less benefits as compared to Northern California workers, even though the cost of living is comparable. Do the math! According to apartments.com, the average rent in Los Angeles for a 2BD apartment is $2,899 per month while in Oakland it is $2,610. Meanwhile the difference in wages can be 30% less if you live in SoCal, despite doing the same job!
Healthcare workers in both ends of California work equally as hard and deserve the benefits of their work. Unequal salaries are a way of pitting workers against each other. Making pay equal is not a call to lower everyone’s salaries. Instead we should fight for all our Kaiser coworkers to have high salaries, benefits and rights, all across the board.
