A red sea of striking union employees descended upon Kaiser Permanente's Honolulu clinic yesterday to protest the health provider's plan to subcontract its mail-order pharmacy services to a sister facility in Denver.

Adorned in red shirts, about 1,000 members of Unite Here Local 5 chanted and carried signs reading “;Kaiser unfair”; and “;Protect Hawaii's jobs”; at several entrances to the clinic. The picketers during the daylong turnout included Kaiser Local 5 employees, members of other unions and community supporters.

Kaiser, seeking to avert a disruption in service, contacted patients who had appointments to tell them that the clinic would remain open. Parking was free; patients were given the option to move appointments to other clinics; and those who came in were given a gift bag with Kaiser tokens in case they were inconvenienced.

Kaiser spokeswoman Lynn Kenton said business ran smoothly and that provisions were made to fill absentee positions, which included cashiers, reservationists, medical assistants and housekeeping. Nurses, represented by the Hawaii Nurses Association, and physicians, who are not unionized, were not involved.

Dona Clamucha, a Kaiser pharmacy cashier of four years and one of the picketers, said, “;Subcontracting is not the right thing to do at this time.”;

  Kaiser Employees Strike Back

 

Kaiser employees strike against plans to move its pharmacy mail order services to the mainland.

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“;We are here because we want to stop subcontracting,”; she said. “;We want to keep good local jobs here in Hawaii, and that's what we're fighting for.”;

Kenton said only the pharmacy duties involving mail-order services eventually will be transferred to Colorado because Kaiser already had invested in the infrastructure in that region and the switch was needed to meet the growing demand for that service. She said the 18 affected Hawaii employees would continue to keep their pharmacy jobs and continue to perform their other duties such as filling all prescriptions that members pick up at the hospital or clinics, calling customers and inputting prescriptions.

Local 5 spokesman Cade Watanabe said he does not want to see any Hawaii work subcontracted.

“;We have to wait and see whether Kaiser takes our message today seriously or not to work together to secure good jobs for people here in Hawaii,”; he said. “;In this economy, we want to secure good local jobs for local people. Kaiser has threatened to take these jobs from Hawaii and send them to Colorado.”;

Kaiser, which has 224,000 members, 17 clinics and one hospital statewide, said it is merely trying to adopt to the changing health care environment.

“;More and more members are changing the way they choose to receive health care, and we're seeing an increase in mail-order or online pharmacy,”; Kenton said. “;This is just kind of how we're evolving with members in a changing health care industry.

“;During 2009, a very tough economic period for Hawaii and the country, Kaiser made a commitment to preserve jobs, which we did,”; she said. “;Now, in 2010, our focus is to grow membership, which will create more jobs for everybody in Hawaii.”;

Ellie Carvalho, a pharmacy technician of 15 years, said employees in the department are operating in the dark.

“;They haven't told us anything,”; she said.

She said the one-day strike was necessary to get their point across.

“;I think it's been very effective because we're fighting for what we need to keep here—good-quality health care for our patients, because we care about them,”; Carvalho said.