Workers gathered outside Kaiser hospitals in San Diego and Los Angeles Monday, launching what is to be an “open-ended” strike by Kaiser mental health care workers throughout Southern California.
Smaller demonstrations were also scheduled for Kaiser properties in Fontana and Anaheim, and a rolling two-week roster of locations shows that pickets organized by the National Union of Healthcare Workers will hopscotch through the southland, in Riverside, Woodland Hills, Irvine and Baldwin Park Tuesday, then on to Fontana, Antelope Valley, Downey and back to San Diego Medical Center in Clairemont on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
As this strike involves mental health care workers, those staffing hospital units, including emergency departments, are not affected and neither are outpatient services delivered at Kaiser’s medical office complexes.
Kaiser said in a statement Monday morning that its “members will continue to have timely access to individual therapy appointments during the strike,” but it is unclear exactly how the health care giant will make good on that promise, given that so many of its regular mental health care workers will be walking picket lines.
Medical providers often bring in temporary replacement workers to fill shifts vacated by striking workers. It was not clear in Kaiser’s statement Monday whether that approach was employed in the current situation.
For weeks, the union has been hitting Kaiser hard with a state settlement and $50 million fine which “requires Kaiser Permanente to take corrective action to address deficiencies in the plan’s delivery and oversight of behavioral health care to enrollees.”
In its latest strike statement, the union claims that “Kaiser staffs approximately 40 percent fewer mental health workers who provide therapy sessions in its Southern California region, which stretches from San Diego to Bakersfield than its Northern California region.”
The union says that Kaiser struggles to retain mental health care workers, even though it has increased hiring, and is pushing for these workers to be awarded pensions in addition to better pay and more administrative time to handle the paperwork that comes with documenting health care provided to patients during appointments.
But Kaiser said the work stoppage is “entirely unnecessary” and accused the union of “slow-walking negotiations,” essentially making a strike more likely.
Kaiser says it is offering mental health care workers 18% raises over the life of a new four-year contract and six hours of weekly planning time.
“These six hours are in addition to two hours set aside for meetings and another five hours of administrative time that is already built into appointment schedules,” Kaiser’s statement says. “In contrast, the union’s proposal could result in a full-time therapist spending nearly half of their time — more than 19 hours a week — not seeing patients.”
Worker classifications involved in the strike include: psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, addiction medicine counselors, licensed clinical counselors, and marriage and family therapists.
As workers gathered Monday, Kaiser worked to make sure the public understands that it is still working to broker a deal. Additional negotiation sessions, the company said, are scheduled for Wednesday and Friday.