This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA.
If you work at Kaiser, you’ve felt the pressure to work overtime, especially as we enter the summer months. You may feel the coercion from management, who calls on everybody to “contribute,” or the insistence may come from other coworkers who claim that because they are putting in extra hours, you should too.
While it may feel like the pressure is coming from all sides, we should be clear on who is really to blame for this extra stress: the bosses of Kaiser. Hospital administrators and managers keep the hospital running with as few staff as they can get away with, meaning overwork for us all, while constantly feeling we are never doing enough. And this problem just gets worse when we enter the summer vacation months.
The math is simple, if we have open shifts then we need more positions, not more burnout – causing overtime. Placing the blame on workers for not pulling extra weight is letting the bosses off the hook – we $ee through you, Kai$er!
