Kaiser mental health professionals kicked off the second month of an open-ended strike in Southern California with boisterous rallies outside Kaiser corporate headquarters Pasadena and Oakland.
About 300 strikers, all NUHW members, converged on Kaiser’s regional headquarters in Southern California on Nov. 21. They brought noise makers, sound systems, and bullhorns. Several people read out loud facts about Kaiser’s understaffing and violations at the executives inside.
Kaiser was expecting an intense rally, and that’s what they got. The company closed the parking garage and had police and extra security present. Security tried to rope off a perimeter to keep workers away from the entrance to the headquarters, but dozens of strikers went right past them and occupied the front entrance area for over an hour.
Several people stood on elevated planters in the plaza. When a security guard told Ligia Pacheco, a Kaiser therapist, to get down, she replied, “I’m under 5 feet. Why are you afraid of me?”
During the rally, a Kaiser patient, Lulu Favela, declared that she had used her last sick day just to be with everyone and show support for the strike.
Several workers spoke, including ADAPT therapist Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson who remarked that she shouldn’t have to be on strike for 32 days to win enough time to be able to take a bathroom break.
The rally was covered by Fox-11, Spectrum TV, the Latin American News Network, and Pasadena Now.
Meanwhile, about 50 Kaiser stewards in Northern California – along with a visiting striker from Southern California – spent their lunch hour gathered outside Kaiser Corporate Headquarters, leading chants of “Settle it Now” and “If we don’t get no pension, you don’t get no peace.”
Several workers spoke, including Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a social worker in Northern California, who led off her remarks, saying “We are here to tell our Southern California counterparts that we are with you. We in Northern California have been where you are — and we are evidence that staying stronger one day longer than Kaiser is the only way to get the fair contract you and your patients deserve.”
Among the speakers was Ana Vargas, a striking Kaiser therapist in Los Angeles. Vargas recalled participating in the last bargaining session before the strike when workers asked why they didn’t have a pension like other Kaiser workers and why they couldn’t get the same amount of time for critical patient care duties as their colleagues in Northern California.
“Their chief negotiator said simply because it costs us money,” Vargas said during the rally. “And the thing is they have the money. They have over 50 billion in reserves. They’re paying scabs over 13,000 per week when it would cost $2,000 to give a pension to one of the Southern California clinicians for the whole year. They want us to burn out. And they’re keeping their corporate greed at the expense of their patients.”
Vargas added, “We want to go back to work. We miss the work that we do. But we know that it’s not sustainable.”
The strike in Southern California began on Oct. 21. After two bargaining sessions during the first week of the strike, there have been no subsequent sessions and no sessions are currently scheduled.
“Kaiser’s top decision makers are in Northern California, and they need to hear from us that the only way to end the strike is to start treating all its mental health professionals with respect and fairness,” Shay Loftus, a psychologist for Kaiser in Northern California, said prior to the rally. “It took a ten-week strike for us to get a fair contract two years ago. There’s no reason for Kaiser to force another long mental health strike when its workers in Southern California aren’t asking for anything we don’t already have in Northern California.”
In 2022, Kaiser therapists in Northern California waged a 10-week strike to secure more time for patient care duties that can’t be done during therapy, such as responding to patient calls and emails, preparing for appointments, devising treatment plans, contacting social service agencies and putting notes in patient charts. The lack of time for these tasks has been a major cause of burnout and high turnover that has contributed to severe understaffing at Kaiser clinics.
While Kaiser agreed to guarantee full-time therapists in Northern California seven hours per week for these tasks, it is only willing to guarantee its therapists in Southern California 4 hours. Kaiser is also unwilling to provide the same retirement benefits for its Southern California mental health professionals as it provides nearly all other Kaiser employees or comparable salaries that it provides to therapists who provide medical services.
Kaiser’s insistence on providing poorer working conditions, wages and retirement benefits for its mental health professionals in Southern California calls into question the HMO’s commitment to transforming its mental healthcare system as required under a $200 million Settlement Agreement with state regulators that was signed in October of 2023.
After acknowledging that its mental health services are understaffed and that patients are waiting too long for appointments, Kaiser was supposed to have a state-approved corrective action plan in place by last spring. However, more than a year after the agreement, there is still no corrective action plan.
“If Kaiser can’t provide us enough time to do our jobs, then it’s never going to be able to fix its mental healthcare system,” Pacheco, the Southern California therapist, said. “Too many lives have been harmed by Kaiser’s disregard for mental health, and we’re going to strike for as long as it takes to make Kaiser value our work and the people we care for.”
