Kaiser Permanente confirmed that it is cutting more than a hundred IT roles nationwide, a majority of which will impact the health care giant’s Northern California division.
A Kaiser spokesperson told The Standard that it “made the difficult but necessary decision to eliminate 115 positions in IT” in November, 65 of which are based in Northern California. According to a WARN notice obtained by The Standard, 12 workers across three Oakland offices, 41 workers in a Pleasanton office, one worker in South San Francisco and one in Walnut Creek were laid off.
No union workers were affected in this layoff round.
“We do not make decisions lightly that affect our valued employees,” a Kaiser spokesperson said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring everyone is treated with respect and gratitude for their contributions.”
This staff cut comes two months after Kaiser laid off 49 workers—of which 28 were Bay Area-based—in its human-resources employee services division after contracting services from an outside firm. Those layoffs coincided with more than 75,000 Kaiser employees staging a three-day walkout, the largest health care industry strike in American history.
Striking workers expressed fury over burnout, short-staffing and corporate outsourcing, long-simmering tensions that boiled over as the Covid pandemic put further strain on the health care industry. Kaiser and its union struck a deal less than a week later amid the threat of a 10-day walkout, securing increased minimum wage, guaranteed raises and more investments in employee training and hiring.
A Kaiser spokesperson said that employees who cannot be retained elsewhere in the company—or choose not to—will receive “generous severance packages, career support and outplacement services,” but did not provide further details about workers’ layoff packages.
The news of this layoff comes during a punishing year-end for workers in the technology industry, beginning this week with a 5% cut at San Francisco cloud company Twilio and a 17% reduction at music streamer Spotify. Also this week, San Jose-based payment technology company Bill laid off 15% of its staff.