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You keep all your benefits. You SHOULD keep your seniority however if you transfer from a hospital that has one contract to another with a different contract you might lose your seniority. For example, I'm in Sacramento and I work with a couple nurses who transferred from San Diego. They lot all their seniority with the transfer because CNA is a different contract then whoever was their union in San Diego. Sort of sucks.
I was told something different. A couple RNs who had been working at kaiser for ged from south to north and they said they lost about 10 years of seniority with the move because it was a different union....I thought they weren't telling the truth until I got better schedules then them and they were lower on seniority list Lame.
OK, let me chip in and clarify a few things.
I am working for Kaiser Sunset for almost 15 years, our place went through multiple unions already and I was in union business for a while, so I know all perks first hand.
Seniority. If you transfer between Kaiser hospital with the same union. You keep your Kaiser seniority - important for raises and vocation accumulation, and in case of lay offs, it is done based on Kaiser seniority. To my best memory, when in the 90' Sunset Kaiser laid off bunch of nurses, it was done based on 10 years Kaiser seniority. Union department seniority will put on hold for one year, meaning that you would not able to bump anyone within your first year of transfer, but later you would. When applying for transfer for an open position, first priority is given to nurses within the same location, second outside nurses with the same union, third nurses with Kaiser seniority, forth everybody else.
If you transfer from different union Kaiser hospital, you keep only Kaiser seniority and perks associated with it.
Is it really that difficult to be hired by Kaiser as an outside applicant?
It is possible. I know there is an new employee orientation right now every 2 weeks. However, Kaiser's tactics (for outsiders) are to hire per Diem first, than, if qualified, offer full time. So if you are ready for this hiring track, you have a chance.
Any Kaiser facility in California offers very good benefits. Short summary for health:
Doctor visit $5
Any prescription medication through Kaiser pharmacy $5
Over the counter meds, certain % off
hospital stay - free
A lot of tests, like MRI, CT and XRAY are free
Lately, in new contract (Kaiser Sunset) Emergency now went up to $50
Not bad Union protection, 4 disciplinary levels with #5 termination. If you got, for an example, level 1 and survived one year without incidents, this level 1 will be automatically erased and if you get the same problem on 1 year plus 1 day, you still will get level 1 and so on.
Plus recent pay increase. I don't have contract now to produce numbers, but can say only about 10 year seniority pay for Med Surge about $60/hr, Tele about $1 more, ICU another $1 more approximately, MAX after 25 years around $80-85/hr. Those numbers are for Southern California, Northern even more. And 2.5% raise every year or something like this, can be wrong here, but not less than.
Faith_n_God
9 Posts
Just wanted to ask Kaiser RN's who transferred to another Kaiser location... did they transfer PTO, sick and life balance hours? Or. did your previous Kaiser location gave you a check for the balance? Also, did you carry your original hire date or they changed it To your new hire date? (For seniority purposes) thank you!