Statement by Sal Rosselli, president emeritus of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, on the the suspension of mediation aimed at settling the Kaiser Southern California Mental Health Strike, now in its fifth month
“When Kaiser Permanente agreed to Gov. Newsom’s request to enter a focused mediation process, we expected that it would give our proposals full consideration — not reject them out of hand. However, Kaiser negotiators continue to show no interest in addressing the core issues that leave its mental health services understaffed and its patients underserved: Insufficient time for therapists to fulfill their daily patient care duties, inadequate salaries that are sharply lower than comparable workers who provide medical care at Kaiser, and unequal retirement benefits that leave mental health workers without the pensions that nearly all Kaiser employees receive.
After it became clear that Kaiser remains unwilling to settle a fair contract that would address longstanding deficiencies in its behavioral healthcare system, our Bargaining Committee voted unanimously to suspend the mediation process.
Kaiser’s unequal treatment of behavioral health care, especially in Southern California, has resulted in multiple state fines and citations over the past decade including a $200 million Settlement Agreement, in which Kaiser acknowledged that it doesn’t have enough mental health therapists and that patients must wait too long for care as a result.
Since the strike began on Oct. 21, we have filed more than a dozen complaints documenting that Kaiser is illegally putting patients on 30-day appointment waitlists, making patients wait up to 44 weeks for autism assessments, cancelling group therapy appointments for thousands of patients including postpartum mothers and sending patients with severe mental health conditions to outside provider networks that aren’t capable of treating them.
Kaiser’s unwillingness to seek compromise through mediation at a moment when patients are struggling more than ever to access the treatment they need further illustrates Kaiser’s disregard for behavioral health care, but it doesn’t deter us from demanding better of Kaiser. Our members remain every bit as determined to make Kaiser fix its broken behavioral healthcare system through a fair contract as when they went on strike nearly 21 weeks ago.
We appreciate the strong support we’ve received from allies including behavioral health advocates and a majority of state legislators who have called on Kaiser to settle the contract on our terms. We stand ready to return to mediation the moment Kaiser is finally prepared to settle a contract that addresses the systemic inequities that harm Kaiser mental health workers and patients alike.”
Below are the three major issues that remain unresolved.
- Patient Care Time: In Northern California, Kaiser guarantees full-time therapists 7 hours per week for patient care duties that can’t be done during therapy sessions, such as responding to patient calls and emails, preparing for appointments, communicating with social service agencies, making charting notes 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. Still, Kaiser is proposing to only guarantee five hours per week, while therapists in Southern California earlier this month reduced their request from seven to six hours per week.
- Pension Restoration: Workers are seeking the same defined benefit pensions Kaiser provides to nearly all its employees, but eliminated for its Southern California mental health workers a decade ago. Over the course of a 40-year career, Kaiser mental health workers without a pension will receive about $2 million less in retirement dollars than Kaiser employees who still have pensions. Kaiser data shows that mental health workers without pensions are twice as likely to leave Kaiser as those with pensions.
- Fair Salaries: Workers are seeking to close the gap between themselves and therapists who provide medical care at Kaiser, who make up to 40 percent higher salaries. Instead, Kaiser is proposing lower raises for its mental health workers than it provided recently to its medical workers in the Coalition of Kaiser Unions.
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The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii, including more than 4,700 Kaiser mental health professionals.—
