More than a thousand Kaiser Permanente pharmacists in Southern California have stopped plans to strike  Thursday and Friday because benefit negotiations have moved forward, said Jim Anderson, spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente.

The dispute centers on a change Kaiser wanted to make to pharmacists' defined benefit retirement plan. President of the Guild for Professional Pharmacists Ralph Vogel, who is representing the employees, said Kaiser wanted to replace those plans with one that would give far fewer benefits that employees could accrue later in employment (California Healthline, 4/20). "If someone is there for 20 years, the next 10 years is where it really builds up," he said. "Now it would be like someone is basically starting all over again," Vogel said.

Vogel also said that Kaiser also proposed raising employee copayments for prescription drugs and physician visits and doing away with workers' retiree health benefits (Smith, Whittier Daily News, 4/19).