Another tentative agreement reached in bargaining

This message was sent on behalf of Lionel Sims, interim senior vice president, Human Resources, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals; and Priya Smith, chief employee human resources officer, The Permanente Medical Group; to Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California mental health and addiction medicine professionals on Saturday, October 11.     

To our mental health and addiction medicine professionals, 

On Tuesday, October 7, Kaiser Permanente and the National Union of Healthcare Workers met to continue negotiating a new agreement for our Northern California mental health and addiction medicine professionals.    

We are committed to a productive and respectful negotiation process that results in an agreement that is fair and sustainable for everyone involved. 

One tentative agreement achieved; additional counterproposals exchanged  

We are pleased to share that we reached one tentative agreement in Tuesday’s session on Appendix E, Local Professional Practice Committee (LPPC) Guidelines, which includes putting our current guidelines into an appendix for clinician reference.  

We presented 4 counterproposals to the NUHW bargaining team that represent compromises on a number of items:

• New Technology (letter of understanding): We heard the bargaining team’s concerns, and, in this counterproposal, we adopted numerous elements of their proposed language. 
• Grievance and Arbitration (Article 33): Our initial proposal specified that if a dispute exists in “more than 4 locations,” the grievance process could begin at step 2. NUHW proposed changing that to “4 locations” and we adjusted the language to reflect that.  
• Seniority (Article 9): NUHW presented a proposal that specified that seniority would be considered when assigning office space. We countered with a proposal that, with a few caveats, we will consider office space preferences based on seniority. 
• Model of Care (letter of understanding, not to be confused with our proposed new article titled Model of Care and Patient Access): We are proposing this article be renamed Best Practices Work Group to more accurately represent the content of the article, which focuses primarily on identifying opportunities for improvement in clinical practice and implementing evidence-based solutions.  

NUHW presented 1 counterproposal for Article 34, Safety, which stipulates that certain documentation relating to security and safety be provided to NUHW-represented employees, and that security escorts be provided upon request, which is our existing policy.  

A note about paid time off  

NUHW has communicated to you that our paid time off proposal contains several takeaways. This is not about taking things away; rather, it is simply about better aligning our pay practices for exempt employees. We look forward to counterproposals on this topic as part of the natural give and take of bargaining.  

Keeping lines of communication open  

We agreed on 3 additional bargaining dates: Wednesday, November 5, Monday, November 10, and Thursday, November 13, and are looking at additional dates in November. Our next bargaining sessions are Wednesday, October 15, and Monday, October 27.  

Thank you for your ongoing dedication to your patients and your profession. 

For more information, visit kp.org/nuhwbargaining.