Behavioral health workers announce new strike dates at Kaiser facilities in California
The union representing roughly 4,000 Kaiser Permanente mental health clinicians announced Wednesday that they have rescheduled their five-day strike for the week of December 16, after postponing it in November after the death of the company’s chief executive officer, Bernard Tyson.
The National Union of Healthcare Workers said the strike would affect patients at more than 100 Kaiser facilities in California from Sacramento to San Diego. The clinicians say they want Kaiser to shorten wait times for patients trying to schedule return visits for behavioral health treatment and reduce caseloads for therapists.
“Mental health has been underserved and overlooked by the Kaiser system for too long,” said Ken Rogers, a Kaiser psychologist who serves on the union’s bargaining team. “We’re ready to work with Kaiser to create a new model for mental health care that doesn’t force patients to wait two months for appointments and leave clinicians with unsustainable caseloads. But Kaiser needs to show that it’s committed to fixing its system and treating patients and caregivers fairly.”
Kaiser labor executive Dennis Dabney said they were working with an external, neutral mediator to resolve the union’s concerns and had proposed a compromise, but the union bargaining team chose to reject it and strike.
“The only issues actively in negotiation in Northern California are related to wage increases and the amount of administrative time that therapists have beyond patient time. We believe these issues are resolvable and there is no reason to strike,” said Dabney, the senior vice president for national labor relations and the Office of Labor Management Partnership at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals.
Dabney said the mediator’s recommendation includes therapist wage increases of 3 percent in the first year of a four-year contract, 2.75 percent in the second year, 3 percent in the third, and 2.75 percent in the fourth year. It also provides for lump sum payments of 0.25 percent in the second and fourth years to ensure 3 percent increases annually over the term of the agreement, Dabney said, and there would also be a $2,600 retroactive bonus.
The mediator also suggested a metric that would establish how much time therapists spend in patient care versus managing administrative items, Dabney said, and this aligned with the union’s request.
In Southern California, where therapists are paid nearly 35 percent above the market, the primary contract concern has related to wage increases and retirement benefits, Dabney said. The mediator’s recommendation includes wage increases of 3 percent in year 1, 2.75 percent in year 2, 2.75 percent in year 3, 2.5 percent in year 4 and lump-sum payments in years 2-4 of 0.25 percent, 0.25 percent, and 0.5 percent. The company also would pay a $2,600 retroactive bonus.
NUHW leaders said that Kaiser patients routinely wait six to eight weeks for therapy appointments. Too often, the union said, patients are unnecessarily hospitalized because they can’t get walk-in services at Kaiser’s mental health clinics when they experience a crisis. When these crises happen, NUHW clinicians said, they must cancel appointments to treat the higher-risk patients.
Vicki Hoskins, a psychiatric therapist with Kaiser in Orange County, told The Sacramento Bee that if a patient had tried to get a return visit with her in mid-November, that individual would have had to wait until February. Hoskins said that her office is down by three clinicians, and one of those positions has been open since February.
“We’ve worked to figure out space for three additional new hires, but no one has been interviewed,” she said.
Hoskins and other therapists also say they need more time to do patient care duties such as charting their clinical sessions with patients, communicating to social service agencies, coordinating care, and responding to patient emails and phone calls.
NUHW members have been working without a contract for a year, and Hoskins said the union didn’t receive a wage and benefit offer worth considering until after a five-day strike in December 2018. She and other members in Southern California also want the company to restore pensions it rescinded several years ago for newly hired behavioral health clinicians.
“How can we trust Kaiser to work with us to fix its mental health care system when it refuses to agree to basic patient care improvements and insists on singling us out for poorer benefits,” said Deborah Silverman, a Kaiser social worker in Los Angeles. “We’re going to keep fighting until Kaiser finally treats mental health care with the same commitment and urgency as all of its other services.”
Dabney said that NUHW-represented employees in Southern California have the same defined contribution plan that nearly a dozen other unions have, and that has been in place for more than four years.
“Our current proposal on the table actually enriches this program such that a 3 percent employee contribution would have a 9 percent contribution from Kaiser Permanente,” Dabney said.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Behavioral health workers announce new strike dates at Kaiser facilities in California."
