MESSAGE TO OUR
EMPLOYEES
Four additional bargaining dates set to kick off the new year.
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 Wednesday, December 17.
To our mental health and addiction medicine professionals,
On Tuesday, December 16, Kaiser Permanente and the National Union of Healthcare Workers bargaining teams continued negotiations for a new contract for our Northern California mental health and addiction medicine employees.
We remain committed to reaching an agreement that allows us the flexibility to provide excellent mental health care to our members and patients, while also remaining a great place to work for our mental health professionals.
In our 23rd session since bargaining began on July 8, we presented a counterproposal on Phone and Internet Reimbursement (Article 17, new Section 15), which resulted in one tentative agreement.
The bargaining teams also had discussions about Wages (Article 17). Kaiser Permanente proposals on Longevity (Section 9) and Bilingual Pay (Section 14) remain unchanged. We declined NUHW’s proposal on Licensure Fee Reimbursement (a newly proposed section). We look forward to continuing discussions on other open items.
The NUHW bargaining team presented 3 proposals: Paid Time Off (Article 23), Job Duties and Workload Distribution (Article 28), and Safety (Article 34). We understand that safety is top-of-mind for our mental health workers and are considering NUHW’s proposals.
We confirmed 4 additional bargaining dates: January 16, January 22, January 29, and February 10. We’re also exploring the possibility of additional dates in early February.
Thank you for taking care of our members each and every day.
For more information, visit kp.org/nuhwbargaining.