Yesterday was our final day of bargaining before our contract expired and rather than moving closer on our major issues, Kaiser management chose to completely reject our counter proposal on Provider Profiles, Workload and Patient Care. They even went so far as to say patient care does not belong in the contract because it “has nothing to do with working conditions.”
Management also chose to give us the same proposal they gave us in August that:
- Allows management to book into Indirect Patient Care (IPC) time at will, without restriction, and also determine when IPC time is scheduled
- Eliminates group preparation and charting time
- Takes IPC time away to be used for case consultation meetings and required trainings
- Eliminates new to return ratios, with no mechanism to ensure return access is adequate
We took this gesture as a declaration of war, as it was totally unnecessary for them to repeat their most onerous proposal on the eve of contract expiration.
After this, we gave Kaiser our wage proposal for annual increases in October of 10% this year, 7% next year and 6% the following year. This is in line with Alliance Unions’ most recent proposal of 23% over the first three years of their contracts.
We also gave management a counter to their Professional Hours proposal, agreeing to changes in language for hourly employees to align with a new timekeeping system once it is in place. However, we rejected their proposals on partial day absences that could make providers responsible for covering any missed patient care hours and also add disciplinary language for an “excessive” number of partial day absences.
On a positive note, after some discussion, we reached an agreement in concept to extend the amount of time for Associates to obtain their licensure. We will prepare a Tentative Agreement for the parties to sign during our next meeting on Friday.
We concluded the day by reiterating to management our true desire to have a more collaborative relationship that would benefit all parties, but this cannot happen if they are intent on rolling back the clock on gains we have achieved in the past several years. We also reminded them that we are open to the involvement of mediators like Dr. Mark Ghaly and Darrell Steinberg, who both helped us settle our contract in Southern California.
