In the latest sign of mounting labor unrest in the health care industry, thousands of Kaiser Permanente frontline health workers in Oregon and southwest Washington walked off the job early Tuesday, part of a coordinated strike spanning several states.

Kaiser has counter-offered a much smaller one-time market adjustment for the Oregon and Washington nurses. Kaiser’s market adjustment offer, combined with the across-the-board wage increases being bargained at the national level, would amount to a 27% total increase in wages over the four years, Karman said.

The walk-out began at 7 a.m. and is expected to continue through Sunday morning. In Downey, dozens of workers walked off the job at a Kaiser medical center in the pouring rain. " If we're out here, there's something wrong in there," said ICU nurse Julie Castle.

The roughly 6,000 health care professionals of the OFNHP are locked in a contract fight with their employer, Kaiser Permanente, the sprawling health care consortium. The mediocrity in question is not that of the staffers themselves;