(AP) SACRAMENTO Thirteen former Kaiser Permanente custodians in Sacramento have sued the health care giant alleging racial discrimination.
The lawsuit claims that the September 2005 terminations of 12 blacks and a Fijian-Indian over timecard violations were racially motivated. It also alleges that preferential treatment was given to white employees for scheduling vacations or taking sick leave.
Kaiser denies the allegations, saying it also fired white employees for timecard fraud.
The workers who lost their jobs say they were not trained in the new timecard system Kaiser introduced last year and were given misinformation by other co-workers.
The rules were made clear to workers, Kaiser spokeswoman Kathleen McKenna said. The employees who were fired were calling in from outside the facility to clock in, fraudulently receiving pay for work not performed, she said.
In 2000, Kaiser’s parent company, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., settled a racial discrimination lawsuit in Cleveland for $235,000. The suit alleged that black clerical workers were discriminated against at a Kaiser hospital in Ohio.
Kaiser Thrive Exposed would like to personally thank Dr. Geoff Galbraith - Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute board member; and Vice President, Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, Quality Improvement Management - for inspiring us to create this website. Did we make it into the top 5?
Kaiser is also known for age discrimination.
Kaiser is well known for age and racial discrimination, even the diversity departments of KP know about it.
Out of all the workforce Latinos make up:
-only 3% of non-professional/non-management
-Less than 1% of mid-level management
-0% of upper-management
Althougth Latinos have a history of working for decades for KP, somehow the number of long-term employees that end up collecting retirement is substatially lower for Latino KP employees vs other races. There seems to be a policy of tripping up Latino employees before they are vested for retirement, or terminating them on trumped up charges so termination cancels the ability to collect retirement benefits after all the years of service.
There is a case in Colorado of a 28-year employee that tried to transfer to another region to finish up his years of service and eventually retire there (the region he was applying for). When after 60+ bids for jobs and 12 months with no success he asked if one of the reasons was him being Mexican American, the recruiter for the region compared him to the employees he had in a Tacqueria he used to own in Atlanta. The employee had been an Optical Dispenser for over 12 years, and was very offended by that comment among others.
The Colorado employee filed a complaint with the state civil rights commission, and within days he was jerked out of his position and put in a manual labor position, and dropped his pay over $600 a month. He tried to get his job back and also filed 2 retaliaiton complaints with EEOC. KP demoted him and gave him 28 business days to find a new position or he would be terminated, losing benefits he worked to receive after almost 3 decades of work. He found another position 1 day before he was to be terminated and is being paid substantially lower than the job he held before KP started messing with him. All 3 charges are active and are in the final investigation stage.
KP Corporate lets each region run themselves as they like, and just collect the profits each month. Management policy is lose paperwork, spread negative falsehoods (once they are out there , even when the truth is revealed, it’s impossible to erase them from the minds of co-workers and sabatoges any advancement), and wear people down mentally and finacially.
The Colorado employee told me he was told by one of his former manager’s henchmen (who has flipped because she was screwed over by the same manager) that he has surprised everyone, they did all they could to try to get him to quit. It will be interesting to see how many more people start turning “state’s evidence” when their jobs are on the line.
If those are national statistics, that should raise some major red flags since over 25% of California’s population is Latino, that being Kaiser’s biggest region. I don’t know much about Colorado’s demographics.
It has been alleged that Kaiser’s IT deparmtment has an explicit policy against hiring Latinos at all, as was reported in this post.
Cruz Bustamante is running for Insurance Commissioner in California this year. I think he would be very interested in hearing from people who have been discriminated against by Kaiser.
Latinos (and everyone else for that matter!) need to get to the polls in November and be heard!
Look Into Hawaii Kaiser Region, discrimination against Afro Americans. Made up accusations and fired them. Shameful.
As a new loyee at KP, I have had to endure unimaginable harrassment by other employees. I am African American, and only one of two African American nurses on my shift. I have to deal daily with ridicule, being put down, gossip, intimidation, and just outright harrassment. I am still on orientation, but I have learned that the plan is to terminate me because of the reviews of one of my 4 preceptors that I cannot keep up with the pace. I am wondering if this is grounds for termination. I’ve only worked there for 3 weeks! My patients have been asked to evaluate me and none of them has had a single negative comment. It should be noted that this is not a new occurence here at KP Sacramento. The manager oven says so, of the relationship between old and new employee. My question is, why is this tolerated?
[...] thousands of talented Latino and Latina caregivers, physicians, and managers, how can that be? (See this comment from 2006 for more disappointing information on Latino and Latina diversity at Kaiser [...]
boo hoo. what a load of garbage. people alwys cry about racial discrimination when they are incompetent and cant accept responsibility for it. Kaiser has 100’s of employees of all races. the one’s complaining here obviously just looking for a free lunch.
I’ll take a wild guess that Mark is a white man.
I have been with Kaiser for about one month at the San Diego facility and racism is very much alive. I am an African American and on a daily basis, I deal with ridicule, being put down, gossip, intimidation, and just outright harassment. I recently filed a complaint with HR and compliance. Things are not much better. How can a company that stands for culture diversity be so wrong?
three afro american women were fired from the kaiser permanente’s psychiatry department in northern california within the last 12 months.