After a five-week hiatus in bargaining, Kaiser management returned to the table today with two proposals. The first really wasn’t so much a proposal as it was a correction of errors in their previous proposal on annual wage increases — they had the years wrong.
Their second proposal was titled “COMMITTEE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”, which sounded like it was written with the assistance of AI.. Kaiser’s chief negotiator portrayed their proposal as “major” movement intended “to address our issues with A.I.”
After we reviewed their proposal, we determined that it did not address our main issue, which is not with A.I. per se, but with the prospect of A.I. replacing clinicians. Rather, their proposal creates a toothless committee which would meet an hour a quarter, with a few token union members, that can only make recommendations on how to best implement A.I. technology the employer has chosen, and the employer can decide to totally ignore the recommendations. The wording of their proposal, in fact, further opens the door for them to use A.I. to replace clinicians.
We made it clear that we are not anti-A.I. We said we would welcome a truly collaborative committee to address A.I. concerns, but there is no point in bargaining over the particulars of such a committee until they agree to the same language SoCal KP agreed to, that guarantees A.I. won’t replace us.
Management also told us today they would agree to mediation. But at the same time they said they would not meet with us in June. We will be in contact with the mediators to determine their availability in July.
While we welcome mediation as a way to improve communication between the parties, we also recognize that mediators have no real power to move the employer. If we want to convince Kaiser to withdraw its onerous take-away proposals and agree to a fair contract, we will have to continue taking actions to hold Kaiser accountable. This includes documenting every time one of our patients is denied the appropriate and ongoing care they deserve.
