Mental health professionals at Kaiser Permanente began their second week on the picket line at several locations around Northern California and the Central Valley today.
More than 2,000 therapists, psychologists, social workers and chemical dependency counselors are calling on Kaiser to increase staffing and end their patients’ long waits for appointments, according to the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
The “open-ended strike” started Aug. 15 after the union said talks with Kaiser broke down. Clinicians accepted a wage offer from management, but Kaiser rejected a proposal that included provisions for increased staffing and reduced appointment wait times, according to the union.
The union maintains Kaiser patients must routinely wait four-to-eight weeks between therapy appointments, and that the health care giant failed to increase staffing during surging demand due to the pandemic.
Kaiser representatives did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
Last week, Kaiser officials said the strike was having an effect on patients, and disputed the union’s claims about providing care.
“This strike and this disruption to patient care does not need to happen,” Deb Catsavas, senior vice president of human resources at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, said on Friday. “While NUHW claims it is fighting for increased access to care, its primary demand is for union members to spend less time seeing patients.
Our patients cannot afford a proposal that significantly reduces the time available to care for our patients and their mental health needs.”
“Mental health therapists have been blowing the whistle on Kaiser for over a decade, and elected leaders are hearing them loud and clear,” said Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
KAISER — The most overrated, overpaid, Hospital and Employees .
No Thanks!
It is not the employees getting the money. They are overworked and understaffed.
redrazor – +1
…. imho – it’s not about wanting to devote more time to patients, as a matter of fact – a major sticking point in negotiations is that they want MORE time away from patients, called administrative time. They want something like 9.2 hrs / week vs what Kaiser is proposing at 7.8 hr. In Kaisers defense, they’ve been trying to hire nurses, staff, almost every title, I’ve been watching their open positions on the web for months.
This is crazy!
They must be buying up all the glass air freshener tubes at Kaiser Shell with all this spare time on their hands.
Mr Kaiser’s business motto was”Give the least amount of care you can,for the most amount of money.’
He stopped making and selling cars(Kaisers) because he knew this scam was huge.
Good for you, Kaiser Mental Health workers! Kaiser should be ashamed at how poor their mental health department is, and has been, related to meeting the needs of patients.. There’s no excuse for Kaiser management neglecting their mental health patients. I support the strike.
+2 for James!
They don’t like their jobs they can leave simple as that. Maybe they should open up their own mental patient offices and make a go of it I bet they’d fail miserably.