1-DAY STRIKE RESCHEDULES SURGERIES AT N. CALIFORNIA KAISER HOSPITALS.

Byline: George Raine San Francisco Examiner 

All elective surgery and noncritical medical services scheduled for Wednesday at Kaiser Permanente's 45 Northern California hospitals and clinics are being rescheduled due to a planned one-day strike by nurses and other unionized workers.

Physicians and nurses who are in management, plus midwives and other licensed health care providers who are not members of the striking California Nurses Association, will be on the job to handle work that cannot be delayed, said Kaiser spokesman Tom Debley. Kaiser also will pull exempt nurses, midwives and other licensed but nonunion health care workers from its Southern California hospitals.

Frustrated by contract negotiations she described as ``an exercise in futility,'' Rose Ann DeMoro, CNA executive director, said 26,000 Kaiser employees will be striking the Northern California facilities of the world's largest health maintenance organization. The 24-hour strike is set to begin at 7 a.m. Wednesday.

Striking in sympathy with the registered nurses will be licensed vocational nurses, optometrists, respiratory therapists, X-ray technicians, social workers, clinical scientists, housekeepers, dietary workers, clerks and transportation workers.

DeMoro, reflecting the tension in the strained labor dispute, said of Kaiser's preparations, ``They assume that without registered nurses they can't run the place, which is probably one of their best insights.''

Emergency and critical medical care, which includes labor and delivery, will be handled as usual Wednesday and early Thursday during the strike, Debley contended.

He said that on Thursday, Kaiser personnel were contacting patients to make them aware of what is happening and asking them if they can reschedule any noncritical Wednesday appointments.

``The basic goal is for us to make sure that anybody who needs to see a doctor that day will be able to, so that sick people get the care they need that day,'' Debley said.

He said patients unsure about their condition should err on the side of safety. ``If they are feeling sick and don't know if it can wait, they should not let any doubt stand in the way. If it turns out they could have waited, better to think about (that) after the fact,'' he said.

Debley added, ``We hope that we will be staffed to the degree we have patients and we will be able to do it and do it without chaos.''

Kaiser sent a bulletin to its employees Thursday that read, in part, that workers may be called off duty as services are reduced. It read that staff will be called off in order of seniority and qualifications within their respective departments - meaning workers with the shortest tenure will be called off first.

Debley said he did not know how many recruits there would be, nor did he know the number of patients that might be expected to have appointments at Kaiser facilities on Wednesday.

The one-day strike will be the first against Northern California Kaiser hospitals in 23 years. The last was in 1974 and lasted seven weeks.

The two sides are at loggerheads over a contract proposal in which 60 percent of the nurses would have their salaries frozen for four years, followed by 1 percent increases the next two years. Then, a merit system would kick in, and, based on performance, nurses could receive 2 percent more.

Forty percent of the nurses, largely in the Sacramento Valley and Santa Rosa area, would be forced to take a 2.5 percent pay cut each year but could also receive a 2 percent performance-based bonus annually.

DeMoro said the proposal is the work of ``consultants who determine where Kaiser needs to go and how they need to go there.'' She said it mirrors a corporate mentality and Kaiser's abandonment of ``community-based, people-based medical care,'' which, she said, still characterizes nurses.