Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

The biggest healthcare worker strike in the nation’s history technically only lasted three days, but resulted in a 21% wage increase for pandemic-frazzled employees of the Oakland-based healthcare conglomerate Kaiser Permanente.

It was last Wednesday when Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers went on strike in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, Washington state, and Washington, D.C. And it was only a three-day strike. But it apparently did enough to disrupt the Kaiser network’s appointments, procedures, and lab work that it forced the healthcare giant to the bargaining table.

And now the Chronicle reports that Friday morning, Kaiser and its workers’ unions announced a tentative labor deal, which would raise worker wages, and curtail Kaiser’s subcontracting and outsourcing.

Workers say they’ve been overworked, underpaid, and burnt out during the pandemic, claiming Kaiser facilities have been short-staffed and overly reliant on non-union subcontractors. The new labor deal established a new Kaiser minimum wage of $25 in California ($23 in the other states), an across-the-board wage increase of 21% phased in over four years, and increased investments in hiring and training.

“Millions of Americans are safer today because tens of thousands of dedicated health care workers fought for and won the critical resources they need and that patients need,” Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions director Caroline Lucas said in a statement. “This historic agreement will set a higher standard for the health care industry nationwide.”

For their part, Kaiser is being gracious, saying in a Friday statement on Twitter that, “We are excited to have reached a tentative agreement with the frontline health care workers of the @UnionCoalition this morning. We are thankful for the instrumental involvement of Acting U.S. Labor Secretary @ActSecJulieSu.”

According to the New York Times, the various unions representing Kaiser lab technicians, medical assistants, receptionists, and sanitation workers had threatened another week-long strike in November if they didn’t get a new contract to their liking. Those unions represent around 75,000 employees in eight different states.

It’s a big win for acting Department of Labor Secretary Julie Su, who flew in from Washington, D.C. to help broker the deal. A former California Labor Secretary, Su is currently an “acting” U.S. Labor Secretary, basically because senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been holding up her nomination.

The labor deal is still not final. Still needs to be ratified in a worker vote, a process that’s expected to begin October 18, according to the Chronicle.

Related: Kaiser Employees, SF School Staff Head to Picket Lines [SFist]

Image: @SEIU via Twitter

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• California is setting new, stricter rules about how packaging should be labeled if it is or is not recyclable. [NBC Bay Area]
• Playoff tickets for the Giants' three scheduled home games are going fast, and there are only upper deck and standing room currently available. [SF Business Times]
• Divers sent down to investigate the source of the oil spill in Southern California found a 13-inch split in the oil pipeline in question, and the entire pipe had been "displaced" laterally by over 100 feet — the possible cause being a ship's anchor. [KTVU]
• The 30-year-old Palo Alto woman who's the primary arson suspect in the Fawn Fire has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. [Chronicle]
• Another luxe food list is out: The World's 50 Best has a 2021 update, and Healdsburg's SingleThread, which has three Michelin stars, joins Atelier Crenn and Benu among the 50 "best" restaurants on earth. [Chronicle]

Photo: Ronan Furuta

Waze, the Israeli-created GPS maps application that tracks traffic and crowdsources up-to-the-minute reports on everything from accidents to potholes, was snapped up by Google in 2013, and as that company has incorporated Waze information into its Google Maps application, it's also begun to connect Waze users — 900,000 in the Bay Area — to encourage carpooling. If, per Waze's motto, the goal is "outsmarting traffic, together," then what better way to do so than by taking cars off the road?

A small pilot program in and around Mountain View was first, then last summer Waze, which operates as a unit of Google parent Alphabet, announced its San Francisco launch. As of this week Waze Carpool is now in all nine Bay Area counties and has entered a partnership with Kaiser Permanente, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Bay Area Toll Authority, and UCSF. That was announced on Facebook yesterday, and Forbes had the inside story.

For Waze Carpool, which already operates across Israel, participants provide information like a Facebook or LinkedIn profile and car details to be paired with others who might be headed the same way. Rather than competing with Uber and Lyft on its own turf, Josh Fried, head of business development for Waze, tells Forbes that "We have no intention of going above the 54-cent IRS cap as that brings us into a whole other type of service and we're very committed to keeping this as a not-for-profit, share the expense type of carpool, for regular people going to and from work... There's no way to become a professional Carpool driver -- it's about a ride to work and a ride home."

Further, drivers can't make more than two rides per day, so there's no incentive to drive more than you would already plan on. And, as for Waze's cut: "We are not collecting a fee, but eventually we will," Fried says, as is the case in Israel.

Major employers like UCSF and Kaiser see the Waze system as in keeping with their own goals, as, predictably, does the MTC. “The transportation option with the greatest available capacity in the Bay Area remains the empty seats in people’s cars,” John Goodwin, a spokesperson for that transit agency, tells the Business Times. “Encouraging carpooling is a heavy lift. We are hopeful that partnerships that involve major employers can make it a little bit lighter.”

Taking a casual carpool across the Bay Bridge or with a coworker to the office is one thing, but Waze users picking up the stranger equivalent of hitchhikers seems more unlikely or at least far off.

Previously: Google's Waze-Based Carpool App Launching In San Francisco, To Compete With Uber