The block outside Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center campus at 1101 Van Ness Ave. was awash with blue scrubs and purple picket signs on Monday afternoon as 40 protesters called for better pay and benefits for doctors.
The hospital’s unionized residents have been holding monthly bargaining meetings with Sutter Health for the last year to negotiate a new contract. Since unionizing in March 2023, they have filed eight unfair-labor-practice charges against Sutter Health.
At the end of June, Sutter Health told medical residents that their benefits would include a $12,000 housing stipend, and up to $2,500 to reimburse their medical licenses. Three weeks later, the hospital’s CEO said that the document listing these benefits was “created and provided in error,” emails verified by Mission Local show.
Sutter Health’s website was then updated with a disclaimer that such perks would not apply to unionized employees. Decisions like this, union members said, lead them to fear retaliation.
Protesters also complained about being offered only a 1 percent increase in pay for each year of their contract, a raise they say is lower than what residents at other hospitals receive and the 3 percent they were promised.
“We’ve dedicated so much of our time and life to taking care of patients and learning this profession, only to get told that we don’t deserve anything better than 1 percent,” said third-year psychiatry resident Eric Kalis. According to Kalis, general medicine residents who work more than 80 hours a week end up making less than minimum wage.
“Fair pay, benefits, and safe work environments are values we share, and we’re committed to reaching a fair contract,” Sutter Health said in a statement.
As passing cars honked in support, the crowd outside the hospital listened to speakers like first-year resident Niloufar Khanna describe the challenges she has faced in the last year alone:
When she was an intern, Khanna received only one day off when a family member died. Once, she stayed at work after throwing up because she didn’t get sick leave, which is required by law. She’s been unable to move out of the apartment where she’s suffered break-ins and been followed home by strangers because, she said, “I cannot afford a safer place to live.”
The first person in her family to practice medicine, Khanna said after her speech that she didn’t “fully understand the gravity” of San Francisco doctors’ struggle when she started. She didn’t want to be speaking at the event, she added, but “sometimes you [have] to do scary things to make the change you want to see.”
“Sometimes, when people think about doctors, they think about people who earn a lot, and they don’t think about all the money that residents have to pay in debt and then turn around and try to pay their rent,” District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who hoisted his own picket sign outside the hospital, commiserated. (The hospital, incidentally, is in District 2).
Actions like this are necessary because of how long it’s taken to make “meaningful headway,” said internal medicine resident Haarika Srinath. Since the negotiations began last August, first years have left, third years have graduated, and new residents have arrived.
Current first-year resident Adhayana Paul chose to do her residency at the California Pacific Medical Center because she wanted to serve the city’s “unique and diverse” population. But everything she had heard about the “standstill” in negotiations with Sutter Health gave her pause.
“That definitely affected my perception of the program and the overall institution,” Paul said.
The doctors did acknowledge that they have made some recent headway by securing paid time off. They plan to keep at it, seeing themselves as part of a wider movement: “There’s been a tide change among residents across the country … we want to be a part of that, and we want to be paid what we’re worth,” said chief psychiatry resident James Finora.
What comes next will depend on how Sutter Health responds, organizers said.
Thank you for the article, with the amount Sutter charged for any care are so high I am really surprised the doctor doesn’t benefit from those revenue, the cost for any intervention compare to hospitals in Europe is at least 10 times where the money goes. !!!?
Medical is big business, just like big pharma. The system, apparently doctors are only cogs in the machine. Even state funded hospitals are a big money maker. Everything else is a casualty of war.
These young people were suckered into taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars
in long term loans. The Best & The Brightest? Certainly not The Wisest.
Decades ago, the same phenomena occurred with Law School Grads as well
as others such as “Gender Studies”, “Feminist Studies”, et al.
As easy as it is to sympathize with these MDs, those who faced life and
chose another route in life should not have to bear the financial burdens
of those whose vanity got the better of them.