MEDIA STATEMENT
January 15, 2026
Kaiser Permanente’s statement on a path forward in Alliance bargaining
Our solution puts the interests of our employees up front and upholds our Labor Management Partnership commitments.
Kaiser Permanente has been bargaining with the Alliance of Health Care Unions for more than 7 months, the longest in national bargaining history, to reach agreement on a new set of national and local contracts.
We have a long-standing joint Labor Management Partnership (LMP) Agreement, which provides a framework for how we and the Alliance collaborate, solve problems, and reach agreements. We’ve been successful in bargaining local and national contract agreements with Alliance unions for more than 28 years under the partnership.
There has been no material movement on key economic issues for months, and on December 14, we were compelled to pause national bargaining because of an incident with the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals. Since the pause, UNAC/UHCP has refused to resolve the matter as requested, which has compromised the national bargaining process.
Today, Kaiser Permanente proposed a solution to move forward with contract negotiations where we would move the remaining open items in national bargaining to each union’s local table, without having to rely on national bargaining.
Under our LMP Agreement, national bargaining is not required. In fact, we have been bargaining local contracts simultaneously with national bargaining, as we have done in the past. Local bargaining has continued to move forward, even during the pause at the national table, and we have resolved all local issues at 29 of 53 local union tables to date. We believe this is momentum we can all build on.
This approach allows us to reach contract agreements with each union that is prepared to do so. Our proposal would enable unions to reach tentative agreements and ratify contracts for every bargaining unit.
This solution honors our relationship with each of our partnership unions and our process. It also honors our commitment to employees without risking health care affordability for our members and patients.
We share a common goal of delivering wage increases, benefits improvements, and professional development opportunities to our workforce — and this path allows all parties to do that. As we move all issues to local bargaining, we stand by our historic offer of 21.5% wage increases over the length of the contract.
Our proposal to move to local bargaining extends to UNAC/UHCP, if union leaders are willing to resolve the issue they created in December.
We have asked our Alliance union partners to respond to our proposal within a week, so we can begin moving forward.
