DOWNEY -- Several Kaiser Permanente employees protested Tuesday’s City Council meeting,, hoping to persuade council members to step in and help save several warehouse jobs that are on the chopping block.

Kaiser is set to outsource around 61 warehouse jobs from its Downey location. The possible action was first brought to public attention around two months ago when workers picketed in front of the hospital.

Hospital workers say that the only thing that has changed since the protest is that the company has served official notice of the planned outsourcing.

“The company did serve official 60-day notice to the [United Healthcare Workers West] Union - and thus the workers - that they’re going to be closing that warehouse on May 23rd,” said Gabriel Montoya, an emergency room assistant at Kaiser and union member. “Kaiser has been doing outsourcing to multiple locations, and of course as a union, as workers we’re going to fight back against that. The reality is Kaiser can afford to pay their workers a living wage; they can afford to pay people who work in Downey a middle-class wage with good benefits. If they want to keep to what they say to people as far as commitment to the community, then part of that is making sure that you keep good paying jobs in that community.”

Before the meeting, Montoya said that this was a reflection of both Kaiser’s and City Council’s commitment to good job in the community. He hoped that council would be willing to have a conversation with the healthcare workers and leaders at Kaiser.

“If you look across the state, Kaiser does have healthcare contracts with multiple municipalities,” said Montoya. “Do those municipalities want to partner with people who are willing to outsource jobs to save a buck? We also want to make sure that Downey City Council has a full understanding of how that affects their economy. As a city councilman, you want to be able to say that you fought for good jobs in your community…if they’re already here, keep them there.

No city council member would want to tout ‘I sat back while good jobs left my city,’ because then there’s an accountability issue that you have with the citizens. By the way, many of those citizens work at Kaiser and live in the city.”

Raymond Martinez, 56, is one of the worker’s whose job is potentially in the crosshairs. He’s been a worker in Kaiser’s warehouse for 26 years.

“What we’re facing right now is our standard of living – paying the mortgage, putting food on the table, putting clothes on our kids’ backs, being able to go to a movie, being able to buy a pair of shoes from time to time, having a quality lifestyle – outsourcing our jobs would have a detrimental effect on employees.”

Martinez also says that quality of service would also be impacted.

“[The outsourcing] would put inexperienced individuals in positions of us experienced employees who have provided exceptional service and have made Kaiser the forerunner in the healthcare industry.”

Kaiser released a statement, saying:

“We have been working for nearly a year with the unions representing our employees who work within our pharmacy warehouses, on how to address the many regulatory, technological and efficiency challenges we face now and in the future. After careful deliberations and extensive discussions with our unions, including SEIU-UHW (17 all-day sessions over the past year), Kaiser Permanente reached the conclusion that an external pharmacy storage and distribution network is the best option for meeting the current and future needs of our members. As we determine the potential impact to employees, plans will be finalized and shared directly with them. We would add that it is no coincidence that SEIU-UHW’s planned activity is occurring the week before bargaining is to begin with our union partners to fully address the effects of this decision.

Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest private employers in California with more than 149,000 employees and 16,000 physicians in the state. Since 2015, we have added more than 13,000 jobs in California and continue to add jobs with more than 12,000 open staff positions and hundreds of physician positions. In the city of Downey alone, we employ nearly 6,000 people and currently have more than 400 jobs open. We never take decisions that affect our employees lightly, but it is important to recognize that the Downey pharmacy warehouse represents roughly 1 percent of our employee population in that city.

We are proud of the kinds of support we offer our employees who might be affected by job changes. Our goal is to take all reasonable steps to redeploy the affected employees within Kaiser Permanente. If retention is not feasible given the circumstances, we provide tools and assistance, including up to one year of salary and benefits equal to the affected employees’ then-current compensation, to support the affected employees and help them gain other employment opportunities. We can’t say exactly what will happen in this case, because we have not completed discussions with union leadership, but we can tell you that in past cases we have demonstrated our ability to successfully redeploy the vast majority of affected employees.”

Most of the healthcare workers and union members in attendance spoke at Tuesday night’s meeting, each urging the council to intervene.

Unfortunately for them, however, it doesn’t seem as though they will be getting much help from City Council.

When approached after the meeting’s conclusion about the Kaiser situation and what role – if any – that the city could take in the action, Council Member Fernando Vasquez pointed out that no council member commented on the matter during the meeting and said that realistically there was really nothing that could be done.

“It’s a private matter,” said Vasquez. “We’re not privy to both sides of the negotiation. We obviously support anything that can increase jobs or create jobs in our city, but at the end of the day it’s a private personnel matter that we hope both parties can work it out.”

Vasquez owns a company within the medical industry.

Healthcare workers bring Kaiser protest to City Hall