Kaiser Settles Strike with Mental Health Providers

Kaiser San Leandro Mental Health and Wellness at 777 Davis St. in San Leandro.

Some 2,000 Kaiser Permanente mental health therapists across Northern California have returned to their jobs after settling a 10-week strike. A tentative agreement was reached last week and ratified by a wide margin on Thursday, Oct. 21.  

Both sides hailed the agreement.

Kaiser Permanente said in a statement, “We appreciate our therapists’ confidence in this agreement, which addresses the concerns they expressed while upholding Kaiser Permanente’s commitment that any agreement must protect and enhance access to mental health for our members. We are glad to have all our employees back, caring for their patients.”

The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which represented the striking therapists, called it the longest strike by mental healthcare workers in U.S. history.

In a statement, the NUHW lauded provisions to reduce patient wait times, reduce turnover, and hire more therapists. There was also a modest pay raise, they noted, adding that pay had mostly been settled before the strike, which was primarily over conditions of care.

Other contract provisions they highlighted included adding additional time for patient-care duties other than therapy, such as responding to patient emails and voicemails, tailoring treatment plans, communicating with social service agencies, and charting appointments. NUHW claims lack of time for these tasks had been driving therapists away from Kaiser.

Bilingual therapists also won a larger differential for providing mental health services in patients’ primary languages, necessary for non-English speakers and more effective for some patients who speak some English. 

Kaiser agreed to expand its new treatment track programs which allow some patients to be treated more intensively for a shorter period of time, the union said. 

The healthcare organization also will expand crisis services to nearly all of its clinics and give therapists more time during a child’s initial assessment visit.

The contract also includes five separate labor-management committees that will meet over the next six months to make recommendations on critical aspects of Kaiser’s service model, which the union has criticized in recent years, and which was affected by recent legislation, SB 221.

Areas covered include patient intake, child and family therapy, and crisis care. Kaiser agreed to implement and fully fund the committees' recommendations, which had been an issue with past agreements on some of these issues.

Both sides thanked Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg for mediating and helping them reach an agreement. He has offered to do the same for the labor-management committees if necessary as they reach and present their recommendations.