One of the state’s largest employers, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, said it would eliminate more than 1,800 positions as it struggles with drooping membership, uncertain healthcare reform and shriveling Medicare reimbursement rates.

Job reductions will occur within the next few months, the Oakland-based nonprofit said Tuesday. Many of the purged positions — just under 2 percent of Kaiser employees — are temporary, on-call or short-hour. Most Kaiser medical centers in California will be affected.

Kaiser said it would attempt over the next year to transfer employees into other positions, but it is also offering up to a year of severance pay and extended health benefits, as well as buyout offers for volunteers to leave the company.

In Southern California, 650 administrative and service employees out of roughly 56,000 total were notified Tuesday that their positions would be cut, Anderson said. About 1,200 workers in Northern California were told the same.

But none of the people who lose their jobs will be members of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers, which reached an agreement with Kaiser that prevents the company from laying off members of the union.

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