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Approximately 180 pharmacists and optometrists in D.C. and Virginia plan to strike on Wednesday alongside more than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers across the nation, according to their union OPEIU Local 2. The strike would be the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

Local health care workers plan to picket outside Kaiser’s Springfield Medical Center in Virginia Wednesday morning if a new labor agreement is not reached with the company, says Sarah Levesque, Local 2’s secretary-treasurer. The union is meeting again with Kaiser executives on Monday in the hopes of averting a strike.

“A strike is a last resort. This is not something that anyone wants,” Levesque tells DCist/WAMU. “They want to take care of their patients,” she says of the Kaiser workers.

She says local pharmacists and optometrists are going on a one-day strike to underscore the severity of the staffing crisis at one of the nation’s largest health care providers. The union is hoping to reach an agreement that would mitigate the crisis by investing more in staff. Specifically, the coalition of unions representing Kaiser workers is asking for a $25-per-hour minimum wage across the company, mirroring legislation that recently passed in California. Among other things, the coalition is also calling for a 6.5% across-the-board pay increase for the first two years of the four-year contract, dropping to 5.75% in subsequent years.

But the coalition says they have not been able to reach...

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