2400 striking behavioral health care workers in Southern California have taken to the streets – literally. On February 8, workers sat down in the middle of Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles, blocking traffic in front of Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center. The strikers, members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), blocked traffic until a dozen of them, as well as California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez and other supporters, were arrested. The sit-in marked day 110 of the strike. The strikers want parity with Kaiser’s workers in Northern California, workers who won significant gains in a 2022 10-week strike.
The Southern California workers want their patients to have timely visits. Today, they complain, members (Kaiser has 4.8 million fee paying members it provides services for) can book in for treatment, but frequently endure four weeks or longer for return appointments and treatment. This even though California mandates a maximum wait time of 10 business days for both initial and return visits. They also want time to do their jobs, to provide mental health care for the Kaiser members who deserve it and pay for it. They want seven hours per week to prepare for appointments, devise treatment plans, provide resources, file mandated reports, go to the bathroom, and so on.
It is astonishing that Kaiser, the largest HMO in the country with profits of $4.1 billion in 2023 and $64 billion in the bank will cancel thousands of appointments rather than meet these minimal demands. And blatantly oblivious it seems to a national crisis in mental health, compounded no doubt by the new regime in Washington. This is in defiance Medicare standards, of its own employees, also of the Southern California labor movement which provides many thousands of members, and an array of elected officials who have called out the giant HMO for having shown no urgency in reaching an agreement. These include Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire who have urged Kaiser to “resume good faith negotiations with NUHW as soon as possible, and to agree to the union’s reasonable contract proposals in order to ensure the delivery of timely and appropriate behavioral health services to your patients.”
Governor Gavin Newsom, in a February 6 letter to both parties, wrote, “Getting our full behavioral health workforce back to work gives us the best chance to address the needs that will undoubtedly grow in the weeks and months to come in the Los Angeles region and elsewhere,” noting that in the wake of the wildfires “thousands of Californians are grappling with extreme loss and displacement” and offering to assist in “identifying a mutually agreed-upon mediator.” As of now Kaiser hasn’t responded to Newsom’s offer of mediation to help settle the strike.
Instead, Kaiser executive Dawn Gillam has doubled down on maintaining the disparity between Kaiser’s Northern and Southern mental health systems, insisting “we are two different business models… and we have two different geographic markets that are very different.” Really. Kaiser’s slow-motion bargaining is set to resume on February 17, it will not schedule another until March 6.
It is a great tribute to these workers that they have held out for more than 100 days and show no sign of weakening. 82% signed a petition committing them to support the strike as long as it takes. I can only say that forcing these workers away from their jobs, without pay, for so long including through the holidays – these are people with lives to live and families to support – is purely and simply unconscionable, cruel.
The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii, including more than 4,700 Kaiser mental health professionals: psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, addiction medicine counselors, licensed clinical counselors, and marriage and family therapists.
