Bargaining update: September 30, 2024

Since our contract expires at midnight tonight, we told Kaiser management today that we are not going to agree to extend the contract, as they had asked. There is nothing in it for us.  All our wages, hours and working conditions remain the same, regardless of whether we extend the contract or not. But if we extend the contract, Kaiser management will continue to drag their feet and not address our staffing and workload issues or treat us equitably regarding wages and benefits. (See below for a brief synopsis of topics discussed today).

Without a contract extension and with 82% of our members giving us, as your bargaining committee, the authority to call for an open ended strike, we are in the best position we have ever been to push Kaiser to make some significant movement during the remaining five scheduled days of bargaining.  And they may resist us to the brink of a strike before coming to an agreement, or they may even want to see if we are serious about striking and force us out. This is why we will continue to prepare for a potential strike, by starting the picket shift sign-up process later this week or early next. We are also finalizing getting our hardship fund up and running and will hold a town hall at 10 a.m. on Sunday, October 13th (details in a future update).

Member Resources

Find additional resources to help you prepare for a strike and even start your own private practice, find temp work on our NUHW Kaiser Member Resources Website.

Sign up to Attend Bargaining

Over a dozen members who attended bargaining today experienced first hand the disrespect and dismissive attitude of Kaiser’s bargaining team. A prime example was during a discussion about some of the unique issues facing ADAPT therapists, with eight of these therapists present, one manager blurted out that she didn’t even know what ADAPT was. Sign up here and come bear witness yourself and help us hold Kaiser accountable for their bad behavior as both our employer and the largest HMO in the state. Bargaining sessions are scheduled for October 1 and October 4 in Glendale and for October, 6, 7 & 10 in downtown LA.

Synopsis of topics discussed today

Pension

In addition to the recruitment, retention and equity arguments we have previously made in support of restoring the pension, today we shared a cost analysis, based on data provided by Kaiser.  It turns out for 2021 and 2022, the last two years for which we have the full data, it would have actually cost Kaiser less to provide a pension than it did for their 6% 401(k) contribution plan. And the average cost difference over the ten year period from 2013 – 2022 was only $2,025 more per year per full-time employee for the pension plan, or less than$1/hour. When asked, Kaiser management still could not explain why our mental health and addiction medicine providers, our medical and home care social workers, or our Psychiatric RN’s do not deserve a pension like almost every other Kaiser employee.

Wages

Kaiser increased their wage proposal slightly by adding 1% to the second year. For a four year contract term, their current proposal is 5% for each of the first two years and 4% for the remaining two. Also, their increases would not take place until after a contract is ratified, and not be retroactive to October 1st.

Towards the end of the day, we gave Kaiser a revised wage proposal, to distinguish between annual increases to keep us on par with other unionized workers and equity adjustments, to make up for years of substandard wage increases (including wage freezes) and to make our salaries more competitive.  Based on the three year contract we are proposing, the annual increases each October would be 6%, 5% and 5%, in line with what the Coalition unions received in 2023. Under our proposal, equity adjustments would be made in April for each of the next three years of 5%, 5% and 4%.

Incentive plans

Kaiser management gave us counter proposals on incentive plan metrics that showed a small amount of movement but with them still holding on to some metrics that we had demonstrated were unachievable and/or nonsensical. For example, they are proposing a metric for psychiatry that would require 50% of all patient visits to be in person. However, they have no idea what actual patient demand is for in-person and could not explain why it was important to incentivize one modality of visit over another. We suspect it is monetary. We will be giving them a revised proposal tomorrow.

Staffing, Workload and Patient  Management Time (PMT)

Kaiser continues to reject any proposal that would address workload and staffing issues and is “still considering” modification of their last proposal on PMT, which is even worse than we thought at first glance. For example, today they clarified that all training and all meeting time, including supervision time, is included in their six hours of “guaranteed” time. So associates would have at least three hours less of time to deal with patient care related issues.

Flexible schedules

They modified their proposal to say the requests for flexible and hybrid schedules would not be “unreasonably denied” which indicates some movement and we will evaluate how to respond.