Busy day at the bargaining table for Kaiser Permanente and NUHW 

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 Monday, November 17.    

To our mental health and addiction medicine professionals,

On Thursday, November 13, Kaiser Permanente and the National Union of Healthcare Workers bargaining teams met to negotiate a new contract for our Northern California mental health and addiction medicine employees.   

21st session packed with answers to proposals

Thursday’s bargaining session was jam-packed with the exchange of several proposals from both the Kaiser Permanente and NUHW bargaining teams.

We addressed 5 open items:

• Duration of Agreement (Article 37): We proposed a 4-year duration for the contract currently under negotiation.
• To address the union’s concerns about on-call time, we proposed the creation of a letter of understanding called On Call Best Practices Support Committee, which is intended to cultivate collaboration on addressing challenges around on-call emergency department coverage.
• Reduction in Force (Article 11): We are standing by our last proposal, as we have already included language addressing this issue in our proposal for Model of Care and Patient Access.
• New Technology (letter of understanding): We are standing on our last proposal, which indicates that new technology is intended to support clinicians in their work.
• Job Duties and Workload Distribution (Article 28): We did not accept NUHW’s proposal and remain firm on our priorities of maintaining flexibility around our model of care and patient access, eliminating new-to-existing patient ratios, and adjustments to indirect patient care time.

The NUHW bargaining team presented proposals on Incentive Plan (Appendix D), Seniority (Article 9), Posting and Filling Positions (Article 10), and Retirement Plans (Article 25). They also proposed 3 additional package proposals: the first containing Professional Hours (Article 15) and Regular Part-Time, Short Hour, Temporary and Per Diem Employees (Article 16), the second containing Union Representation (Article 26) and Professional Practice Committees (Article 31), and the third package containing 2 letters of understanding on Telecommuting and New Technology.

3-week hiatus in bargaining; returning to the table in December

We will meet again on Monday, December 8, and Tuesday, December 16, to continue bargaining in good faith with the goal of agreeing on a contract that allows us to provide high-quality, accessible mental health care to our members and patients, while supporting our mental health professionals.

We see and value your commitment to serving our members and patients in the very important areas of mental health and addiction medicine.

For more information, visit kp.org/nuhwbargaining.