About 2,300 Kaiser Permanente employees in Hawaii are set to walk off the job this morning as part of a five-day national strike, joining over 45,000 unionized health care workers across the country in one of the largest labor actions in the health care sector in recent years.

The strike follows months of stalled negotiations between Kaiser and the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which represents nearly 61,000 workers nationwide. At the center of the dispute is a disagreement over wages and staffing.

Union members say they are fighting for wages that will allow them to continue to live in Honolulu, while the company contends that they have offered a generous pay increase to a workforce that already makes more than their counterparts at other health companies.

Haaheo Miller, 43, who has

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