Kaiser Permanente workers gear up for statewide strike
Therapists, psychologists and social workers will walk off the job
In protest of what it says are long wait times and chronic understaffing, the union representing nearly 4,000 of Kaiser Permanente’s California mental health clinicians is gearing up for a statewide strike that will ultimately affect more than 100 clinics in California.
Kaiser mental health care workers statewide — including psychologists, social workers and therapists — plan to join picket lines for five days starting Nov. 11, according to the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
In Northern California, affected services run the gamut from individual therapy to social work; in Southern California, a handful of other professionals like dieticians also plan to strike.
On Wednesday morning, workers gathered for a pre-dawn vigil outside the health care giant’s Oakland headquarters to remember patients who have died by suicide — in some cases, because they had to wait too long for care, workers say.
Mickey Fitzpatrick, a clinical psychologist at a Kaiser clinic in Pleasanton, said he has so many patients that his availability fluctuates between 4 to 6 weeks between appointments, increasing the risk of suicide for patients who have to wait over a month to get care.
“It feels very disheartening to work for a healthcare organization that forces its patients to wait excessively to get in,” Fitzpatrick said. “For psychotherapy to be effective, clients should be getting care once every week or two.”
The wait times stem from gross understaffing, said NUHW’s president Sal Rosselli, and constant burnout from workers expected to work through lunch and late into the evening doing ancillary work, like checking in with patients.
Those issues have been at the core of negotiations between the union and Kaiser for over a year and a half now. Workers say that Kaiser has not hired quickly enough to fill in staffing gaps, and ought to restructure workloads in order to retain people. The union is also pushing for geographically-based “crisis teams” to handle high-priority situations, rather than pulling away staff from regular appointments.
Kaiser has dug into previous offers rather than taking those requests seriously, Rosselli said. This is the union’s second planned walk-off in less than a year; last December, workers held a five-day statewide strike.
The health care nonprofit, for its part, says that it has offered “highly competitive” wage and professional development opportunities.
“We have made significant progress to address the national crisis in mental health care: we’ve hired hundreds of new therapists; we are building dozens of new treatment facilities; and we are investing millions of dollars to help more people enter the mental health professions,” John Nelson, Kaiser’s vice president of communications, previously told this news organization.
Wednesday’s vigil is one of several planned for this month. Last Saturday, about 60 workers marched from the company’s headquarters on Kaiser Plaza to the Lake Merritt Pergola, some with signs reading “Kaiser, don’t deny my patients mental health care.”
On Sunday, workers plan to march again, Fitzpatrick said.
“Until Kaiser takes mental health care as seriously as it does medical care, we’re going to be consistently in the same position. That’s why we’re out here,” Fitzpatrick said.