Carmen Madrigal, a breast cancer survivor, gets choked up talking about the phone calls she’s made to cancer patients to cancel appointments because Kaiser Permanente was short staffed.

“This is not OK,” said Madrigal, of Aurora.

Madrigal, an optical business coordinator, has worked for Kaiser Permanente in Colorado for nearly nine years.

She was one of what organizers estimated as roughly 1,000 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) members who stood on the picket line outside the Kaiser Permanente Waterpark Administrative Facility in Aurora on Saturday. They joined thousands of Kaiser employees in California, Washington and Oregon in a coordinated protest of the “unsafe staffing and patient care crisis.”

“This is about patient care,” Madrigal said. “This is not just about us.”

Colorado has about 3,000 SEIU union members who work for Kaiser and more than 85,000 in seven states and Washington D.C.

The SEIU is in the midst of negotiating its contract, which expires on Sept. 30.

Negotiations began in April.

The picket was not a strike and health care services were not interrupted Saturday.

Kaiser employees described a staffing shortage severe enough to lead to months-long waits and delayed care.

“We’re low staff on everything,” said Lupe Azua, 61, a patient transporter at Franklin Medical offices in Denver.

Azua logs 10, 12, 15,000 steps a day transporting patients on 12 floors of the medical building. Two transporters had worked the building until April. Her work load has doubled since.

“If we’re not taking care of patients, who is going to take care of them?” Azua asked.

The staffing crisis is not unique to Kaiser.

Health officials have been sounding the alarm for years because Americans are living longer with chronic health conditions. And as the gray tsunami of Baby Boomers, who are between the ages of 55 and 73, head into retirement the need for Medicare and age-related health care services will continue to rise.

The exodus from the profession during the COVID-19 pandemic, too, has only exacerbated the staffing crisis.

Over the next three years, Colorado is expected to face a shortage of 54,000 lower wage health care workers and more than 10,000 registered nurses, according to an analysis by Emsi.

Esmi, Economic Modeling Specialists International, conducts labor market data and economic analysis using an array of government sources.

To address the national staffing shortage, Kaiser Permanente has committed to hiring 10,000 union-represented jobs this year, of which roughly 6,500 have been filed.

“Our priority is to reach an agreement that ensures we can continue to provide market-competitive pay and outstanding benefits,” Elizabeth Whitehead, a Kaiser spokesperson in Colorado, said in an email to The Denver Gazette.

It’s unclear how many of those jobs will be in Colorado.

Kaiser, though, is hiring for a number of Colorado roles that include licensed practical nurses, medical assistants, lab and pharmacy techs, among others.

Matt Glatt-Paulison, of Colorado Springs, had worked as a pharmacy tech until recently, switching to the claims department.

He didn’t make the move on a whim.

Glatt-Paulison, who had always wanted to work in healthcare, spent two years trying to get on with Kaiser Permanente.

But a lot has changed since 2014, when he began working as a pharmacy tech for Kaiser. Jobs that once saw a clamor for applicants like Glatt-Paulison now linger unfilled, he said.

“It’s not what it used to be,” Glatt-Paulison said.

Staffing shortages have meant missed breaks and lunches, or shortened ones, Glatt-Paulison said, adding he kept hoping conditions would improve.

“It’s not safe,” Glatt-Paulison said. “I didn’t feel like I could provide the level of care for our patients the way I wanted to.”

For those on the picket line Saturday, the protest was about earning a living wage – not living paycheck to paycheck – providing for their families and giving the top-notch care for which Kaiser Permanente has been known.

Whitehead said the organization is confident they will reach an agreement with the union. But she also questioned the national picket at this stage of the bargaining.

“Given where we are in the bargaining process, it’s clear the picketing by the Coalition isn’t about drawing attention to new issues, but rather an attempt to create bargaining leverage,” Whitehead said.

Union members recoiled at the characterization.

“That’s a slap in the face, in my opinion,” said Patricia Johnson Gibson, vice president of Healthcare at SEIU Local 105.

“You should take care of your employees in the same way you expect your employees to care for your patients,” Gibson said.

Gibson is a contract specialist who has worked at Kaiser for more than two decades.

Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit organization, posted $1.2 billion in profits the first quarter of this year after reporting $4.5 billion in losses last year, according to Healthcare Dive.

Many of the frontline workers picketing Saturday in Aurora earn less than $25 an hour.

According to Kaiser, more than two-thirds of the organization’s workforce is comprised of people from “underrepresented and historically marginalized groups” and 75% of the company’s employees are represented by unions.

Across the health care industry, the average employee turnover rate last year was 19.8%, according to PwC’s annual Saratoga survey. Kaiser had an 8.5% turnover last month, Whitehead said.

In Colorado, Kaiser Permanente has 30 medical offices along the Front Range that serve more than 500,000 patients annually.