OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — An estimated 31,000 registered nurses and other front-line Kaiser Permanente health care workers launched an open-ended strike this week in California and Hawaii to demand better wages and staffing from the health care giant.
The picketing that began Monday marked the second major walkout in recent months by employees represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals. A five-day strike in October ended with negotiations resuming, but talks broke down in December.
This week the union accused Kaiser of refusing to return to national bargaining discussions.
“We will continue to push Kaiser to stop their egregious unfair labor practices against the frontline workers who deliver the best care for their patients and billions in profit to do the right thing, and come back to the table to bargain in good faith,” the union bargaining committee said in a statement.
Kaiser said Sunday that the union had agreed to return to local bargaining, even as workers moved forward with the strike. The company said it paused national bargaining last month after what it described as a threatening incident involving a union official.
“Illegal threats are a line that cannot be crossed,” Greg Holmes, Kaiser’s chief human resources officer, said in a statement. “This union official’s actions have compromised the national bargaining process and undermined both parties’ ability to continue good-faith bargaining.”
Those on strike, including pharmacists, midwives and rehab therapists, say wages have not kept pace with inflation and there is not enough staffing to keep up with patient demand.
They are asking for a 25% wage increase over four years to make up for wages they say are at least 7% behind their peers.
Kaiser Permanente had countered with a 21.5% increase over four years. The company says that represented employees earn, on average, 16% more than their peers, and it would have to charge customers more to meet strikers' pay demand.
Arezou Mansourian, a physician assistant on the bargaining team, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Kaiser has been unable to retain and recruit providers, which is impacting patient care. Medical staff have been leaving Kaiser for higher-paying jobs at other local hospitals, Mansourian said.
She said the union’s fight for better working conditions will ultimately help patients as well.
“We know it’s a pain right now, but it’s so that we can take care of you better in the future,” Mansourian told the Chronicle.
The company said health clinics and hospitals will remain open during the strike, with some in-person appointments shifted to virtual appointments, and some elective surgeries and procedures being rescheduled.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 12.6 million members at 600 medical offices and 40 hospitals in largely western U.S. states. It is based in Oakland, California.
In New York City, about 15,000 nurses who walked off the job headed back to the bargaining table earlier this month. The New York State Nurses Association said contract negotiations resumed with officials at the three private hospital systems impacted by the strike: Montefiore, Mount Sinai and New York-Presbyterian.
Kaiser Permanente nurses and health workers represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals picket outside Kaiser's Oakland Medical Center on the first day of an open-ended strike Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (Jessica Flores/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Kaiser Permanente nurses and health workers represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals picket outside Kaiser's Oakland Medical Center on the first day of an open-ended strike Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Oakland, Calif. (Jessica Flores/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — National Transportation Safety Board members were deeply troubled Tuesday over years of ignored warnings about helicopter traffic dangers and other problems, long before an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk collided a year ago, killing 67 people near Washington, D.C.
The placement of a helicopter route in the approach path of Reagan National Airport’s secondary runway created a dangerous airspace and a lack of regular safety risk reviews made it worse, the board said. That was a key factor in the crash along with air traffic controllers’ over reliance on asking helicopter pilots to avoid other aircraft.
Throughout the daylong hearing, investigators emphasized the history of missed opportunities to address the risks. Those include the Federal Aviation Administration denying a 2023 request by a regional supervisor to reduce air traffic at Reagan and the failures to relocate the helicopter route or warn pilots more about the dangers after an eerily similar near miss in 2013.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy made no apology for her occasionally stern tone.
“We should be angry. This was 100% preventable. We’ve issued recommendations in the past that were applicable to use. We have talked about seeing and avoid for well over five decades. It’s shameful. I don’t want to be here years from now looking at other families that had to suffer such devastating loss.”
Family members listened intently during the hearing. Some were escorted out, including two in tears, as an animation of the flights was displayed on video screens recreating some of final moments of their loved ones' lives. Others wore black shirts bearing the names of first responder units.
“The negligence of not fixing things that needed to be fixed killed my brother and 66 other people. So I’m not very happy,” Kristen Miller-Zahn, who watched from the front row, said during a break.
The animations demonstrated how difficult it would have been for the pilots in both aircraft to spot the other amid the lights of Washington. They also showed how the windshields of both aircraft and the helicopter crew’s night vision goggles restricted views.
Victims’ families say they hope there’s meaningful change in response to the long list of recommendations the NTSB adopted Tuesday. The measures seek to improve training and staffing particularly at Reagan but also at airports while strengthening safety standards. The recommendations are designed to strengthen a culture of safety at the FAA and Army and reduce the risk of a similar midair collision.
Before hearing from investigators, Todd Inman said “systemic issues across multiple organizations,” not an error by any individual, caused the tragedy although the NTSB did also highlight several key mistakes.
Everyone aboard the jet, flying from Wichita, Kansas, and the helicopter died when the two aircraft collided and plummeted into the icy Potomac River. It was the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001, and the victims included 28 members of the figure skating community.
The FAA took some action immediately after the crash and last week made some changes permanent to ensure helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace around the airport.
Homendy said she couldn’t believe the FAA didn’t realize this helicopter route provided at most a mere 75 feet (23 meters) of separation between planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway.
“We know over time concerns were raised repeatedly, went unheard, squashed — however you want to put it — stuck in red tape and bureaucracy of a very large organization,” Homendy said. “Repeated recommendations over the years.”
Mary Schiavo, a former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General, said it's troubling to hear how many times the FAA failed to act.
“It was just a shocking dereliction of duty by the FAA. And they have so much work to be done to fix it. And just from my background, I don’t know if the people there are up to it,” Schiavo said.
Just Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a plan to reorganize the FAA and create one single safety office that can track concerns agencywide and enforce the same standards instead of the fragmented approach taken by different silos within FAA. But Homendy expressed concerns about the conflict of interest created by putting someone from the air traffic control unit in charge of safety, so the board recommended that FAA seek outside advice from the department's Inspector General on improvements.
NTSB investigators said the Army and FAA weren’t sharing all safety data with each other before the crash, and that Army helicopter pilots often weren’t even aware when they were involved in a near-miss around Reagan.
NTSB human performance investigator Katherine Wilson said an air traffic controller felt a “little overwhelmed” when traffic volume increased to 10 aircraft about 10 to 15 minutes before the collision, but then “felt the volume was manageable when one or two helicopters left the airspace.”
Yet about 90 seconds before the collision, Wilson said, “traffic volume increased to a maximum of 12 aircraft consisting of seven airplanes and five helicopters. Radio communication showed that the local controller was shifting focus between airborne, ground and transiting aircraft.”
The workload “reduced his situational awareness,” Wilson said. If two controllers had divided up responsibility for helicopters and planes, like they were supposed to at that time of day, the aircraft might have been warned sooner and prevented the collision.
Whether that happens depends on how Congress, the Army and the Trump administration respond after the hearing. A bill, that Homendy has endorsed, would require aircraft to have advanced locator systems to help prevent collisions. The senators who introduced it believe their proposal would address many of the NTSB’s concerns, but they are already discussing a hearing in the next few months focused on the final report.
Even before Tuesday, the NTSB had already spelled out many key factors that contributed to the crash. Investigators said controllers in the Reagan tower had been overly reliant on asking pilots to spot other aircraft and maintain visual separation.
The night of the crash, the controller approved the Black Hawk's request to do that twice. However, the investigation has shown that the helicopter pilots likely never spotted the American Airlines plane as the jet circled to land on the little-used secondary runway.
In a statement, the FAA said safety remains its top priority. It has reduced hourly plane arrivals at Reagan airport from 36 to 30 and worked to increase staff in the tower. The agency said it has 22 certified controllers in the tower and eight more in training.
“We will diligently consider any additional recommendations” from the NTSB, the FAA said.
Several high-profile crashes and close calls followed the D.C. collision, alarming the flying public. But NTSB statistics show that the total number of crashes last year was the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, with 1,405 nationwide.
Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and White reported from Detroit.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators William Bramble, from left, Captain Van McKenny and Caleb Wagner speak during the hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
People attend the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presides over a NTSB hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
People attend the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
People attend the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presides over the NTSB fact-finding hearing on the DCA midair collision accident, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presides over the NTSB fact-finding hearing on the DCA midair collision accident, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Materials Engineer Mike Meadows looks at training samples on a microelectronic microscope in the Materials Laboratory of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), speaks with journalists during a tour of the NTSB's laboratories, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
FILE - Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
FILE - Crosses are seen at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the plane crash in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jan. 31, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
