Kaiser Permanente is an inefficient company that wastes member premiums, lead by over-paid, incompetent administrators.
Pros
Most hourly positions (non-managerial) are covered under a union contract and provide decent wages and great healthcare benefits.
Cons
Incompetent management 'thrives' at Kaiser Permanente. Inefficiencies administrated by management plague many day-to-day operations who reward themselves with multi-million dollar per year salaries and numerous pension plans for themselves while simultaneously raising member's premiums significantly and working to eliminate the one employee pension plan and limiting annual raises of workers to less than yearly inflation. Administration began a yearly program in which they waste millions of dollars by sending EVERY EMPLOYEE (every year) to a 'service forum' with the stated purpose of encouraging better service to healthcare members while simultaneously short-staffing every department for several days which increases patient wait times and reduces services and/or requires departments to cancel members appointments. Following the service form, management issues corrective actions against workers for attempting to provide better service per the recommended service forum recommendations (i.e. walking patients to their scheduled appointments, conversing with patients in order to provide a more friendly healthcare environment, etc.) because this sometimes takes away time from the workers' other duties causing them to not finish work and/or work overtime. Basically, administrations SAYS they promote a positive, rewarding environment but they DO nothing to back their words up. But, it's not all management's fault; many employees have worked for this company for a lengthy period of time because of the decent wage and benefits, but morale is poor (in part due to management's attacks on meaningful wage increases and efforts to eliminate pensions, etc) but also because these workers are simply bored. These are repetitive jobs which many have performed for many years but because they are comfortable with the pay, many do not continue with school or other, constructive activities. Instead, employee-on-employee fighting is frequent (i.e. workers creating a poor work environment for each other by trying to get each other 'in trouble'). I worked at Kaiser Permanente for over 15 years but decided that was enough. If you're searching for somewhere to work that truly fosters a team/family environment, this isn't it.