Striking mental health workers hit the streets across Southern California this month ramping up pressure on Kaiser Permanente to settle a contract that will help fix its broken mental health care system.
Workers marched in Bakersfield, and held die-ins in San Diego and Pasadena to commemorate the lives that have been lost due to Kaiser’s underfunded and understaffed mental health services. In San Diego, workers and NUHW President Sophia Mendoza confronted Victor Voisard, Kaiser’s senior director of human resources, peppering him with questions as news cameras rolled.
“What we’re hearing from Kaiser is that everything is okay, everything is okay, but we know things are not okay,” Mendoza told the HR executive according to Courthouse News. “Patients are not okay, and that’s on Kaiser.”
“Does everybody deserve a pension?” Mendoza asked Voisard.
“That’s not for me to answer,” Voisard responded, adding that he would relay the message to other Kaiser executives.
In addition to Courthouse News, the actions were covered by FOX-5, ABC-10, San Diego Union Tribune, Univision, KTLA, KABC-7 in Los Angeles, KNX news radio, Pasadena Now, KPCC/LAist and NBC and ABC affiliates in Bakersfield.
More actions are scheduled for April, when about a dozen strikers are planning a 5-day hunger strike to bring more attention to the plight of Kaiser patients, and the Assembly Health Committee is expected to hold hearings looking at Kaiser’s mental health services and considering AB 1429, a bill from Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Bakersfield, that would require Kaiser to reimburse members who have been paying out-of-pocket for behavioral health services Kaiser is required to provide.
These most recent actions come more than five months after nearly 2,400 NUHW-represented mental health therapists, psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses went on strike in Southern California, determined to make Kaiser stop treating mental health care as a second-class service.
However, despite a majority of state lawmakers urging Kaiser to settle on the workers’ terms and evidence of large scale appointment cancellations, Kaiser executives still insist on maintaining inferior conditions for its Southern California mental health workers, which have resulted in record state fines, understaffed clinics and illegally long waits for appointments that often stretch over a month.
No negotiations have been scheduled since mediation broke down earlier this month. Kaiser remains unwilling to provide the same amount of time for critical patient care duties that it already gives therapists in Northern California or restore pensions that it took away from Southern California mental health workers a decade ago, but still provides to nearly all other Kaiser employees.
“Kaiser has gotten away too long with having a separate and unequal mental health system in Southern California,” said Jade Rosado, a striking Kaiser social worker in Los Angeles. “Our strike is about finally winning equal treatment for our patients and ourselves, and we’re going to keep fighting until we achieve that goal.”
Kaiser, which is sitting on $60 billion in financial reserves, provides mental health services for its 4.8 million members in Southern California. In 2023, the state of California ordered Kaiser to pay a $200 million penalty, including a $50 million fine, for mental health violations that included excessive appointment wait times due to the understaffing of mental health services. Kaiser was also fined $4 million in 2013 for mental health violations and later put under state oversight.
Since the strike began, NUHW has filed more than a dozen complaints documenting that Kaiser is further violating the rights of patients during the strike, making it harder than ever to access mental health services. The complaints show 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 is letting things go from bad to worse for patients, and there’s no excuse for it,” said Mayra Castro, a striking Kaiser social worker in Bakersfield. “We’re not asking for anything Kaiser doesn’t already provide nearly all of its employees, and everything we’re seeking would increase staffing and improve access to care.”
