Bargaining yesterday started with the Employer going through the outstanding issues just to tell us they were rejecting almost all of our proposals and holding onto almost all of theirs. They were adamant that they would never agree to some of our proposals and equally unwavering on their onerous proposals that they flagrantly refer to as the KP Big 3, summarized below:
- Right to Determine Model of Care and Outside Referral of Cases – Expands management rights plus allows employer free reign to change its model of care for mental health and addiction medicine, even if the change results in layoffs of clinicians,rather through subcontracting or the use of AI. (Read this article from KQED regarding the AI angle).
- Patient Care Time Improvement – Eradicates the gains we achieved in our latest contract by allowing management to book into Indirect Patient Care (IPC) time at will, without restriction and to determine when IPC time is scheduled Also eliminates group prep/charting time and mandates IPC time be used for case consultation meetings and required trainings.
- Elimination of 1:5 New to Return Patient Ratios – Eliminates guardrails to ensure return access is adequate.
Kaiser management did give us a counter to our proposal to include reference in the contract to the Employer’s “policy” on reimbursements for cell phone and internet usage, changing “policy” to “guidelines”.
We gave Kaiser management revised proposals on the following:
- Article XXIII – Paid Time Off (PTO) Program – asking for a float holiday instead of both Juneteenth and a float, with those wishing to use the float for Juneteenth guaranteed the time off.
- Article XXVIII – Job Duties, Workload Distribution, Provider Profiles and Access to Care – simplifying our language for protected Case Management Time for Case Managers and IOP.
- Article XXXIV – Safety – proposing language to ensure providers who are threatened by patients know the process for addressing such situations and are involved in the safety plan.
