After no progress during heated bargaining session Monday, workers will wait for Kaiser to agree to mediation, as first requested by Gov. Newsom, before returning to the bargaining table.
After Kaiser Permanente made no movement during a bargaining session on Monday, and then stormed out in a fit of rage, striking mental health workers have determined that focused mediation, as requested on Feb. 6 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is the only way to potentially reach an agreement to end the strike now in its 19th week.
With Kaiser refusing to bargain again until March 6, the nearly 2,400 mental health therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and psychologists, represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, has informed Kaiser that they will not meet that day and are instead once again calling on Kaiser to agree to Gov. Newsom’s call for “focused mediation.”
“We’re four months into a strike, and Kaiser has barely offered any compromises even though we aren’t asking for anything Kaiser doesn’t already provide its mental health therapists in Northern California,” NUHW President Emeritus Sal Rosselli said. “Gov. Newsom has called on both sides to enter focused mediation, and we’ll meet every day with a mediator until we get an agreement, but we’re not going to continue the charade of a bargaining process that in reality is just Kaiser trying to delay us into submission.”
Kaiser offered no new proposals during Monday’s bargaining session, but its negotiating team stormed out of the room while workers were explaining a new comprehensive proposal that included proposed compromises on two unresolved issues.
After the first week of the strike in October, Kaiser didn’t return to the bargaining table until mid-January, and has only agreed to intermittent negotiating sessions where little progress has been made. On Feb. 6, Gov. Gavin Newsom, referencing the trauma of the Los Angeles wildfires, wrote a letter to both parties asking them to enter focused mediation and offering to help them agree upon a mediator.
The union workers immediately agreed to the governor’s request, but Kaiser is continuing to defy the governor, refusing to agree to mediation, even though it took a mediator to settle a 10-week strike in 2022 by Kaiser mental health therapists in Northern California.
Regional Disparities
The agreement in Northern California provided therapists more time for patient care tasks that can’t be done during therapy appointments. However, Kaiser management has refused to extend the same standard to Southern California, creating in essence a two-tiered mental health system, in which patients in Northern California have better access to care and mental health professionals have more time to meet the needs of their patients.
Overall, Kaiser staffs approximately one therapist for every 3,000 members in Southern California compared to one therapist for every 2,000 members in Northern California, forcing more patients in Southern California to navigate external provider networks whose therapists can’t easily communicate with their Kaiser doctors and specialists.
In a recent interview, Kaiser executive Dawn Gillam doubled down on maintaining the disparity between Kaiser’s Northern and Southern mental health systems, telling ABC7 that “we are two different business models… and we have two different geographic markets that are very different.”
Workers seeking equity for mental health in Southern California
Striking workers are seeking to address entrenched disparities in the Kaiser system between medical care and mental health care — and between Kaiser’s mental healthcare system in Northern and Southern California — that leaves patients in Southern California with less access to care.
The workers are seeking a contract that would:
- Provide them the same amount of time (7 hours per week) that their full-time counterparts in Northern California receive to perform critical patient care duties that can’t be done during therapy sessions. In Southern California, Kaiser is only offering 5 hours per week for tasks that include responding to patient calls and emails, preparing for appointments, communicating with social service agencies and devising treatment plans. The lack of time for these tasks in Southern California is a major reason why therapists leave Kaiser, contributing to the HMO’s chronic understaffing issues.
- Restore pensions that nearly all Kaiser employees receive, including mental health professionals in Northern California, but were taken away from mental health professionals in Southern California a decade ago. More than 70 percent of Kaiser mental health professionals in Southern California do not have a pension, and Kaiser data shows that they are twice as likely to leave Kaiser.
- Close the gap between themselves and therapists who provide medical care at Kaiser, who make up to 40 percent higher salaries.
“We’ve documented instances during the strike of Kaiser forcing patients onto waitlists, cancelling therapy groups for women with postpartum depression, and violating mental health staffing requirements in critical units including NICUs, yet Kaiser has no urgency to reach an agreement,” Rosselli said. “For Kaiser to continue disrupting the care of so many of its patients in order to maintain a lower standard for its Southern California behavioral health workforce is not acceptable to our members, and shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone who relies on Kaiser for their medical and behavioral health care.”
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The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawai’i, including more than 4,700 Kaiser mental health professionals.
