OAKLAND, Calif.—As some 2,400 mental health professionals at Kaiser Permanente facilities in Southern California marked Day 31 in an open-ended strike, dozens of mental health professionals at Kaiser facilities in northern California – psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, licensed clinical counselors, and more – gathered Nov. 21 for a noontime solidarity rally at the healthcare giant’s main corporate headquarters here.
“Southern California, we are with you!” declared Ilana Marcucci-Morris, as her fellow union members turned from marching around the towering downtown Oakland building that houses Kaiser Permanente’s top corporate offices and gathered in front of the building’s main entrance.
Marcucci-Morris, a licensed clinical social worker at Kaiser Oakland, was on the bargaining committee during the historic 10-week strike launched by over 2,000 Northern California mental health professionals in August 2022.
“We in Northern California have been where you are,” she said. “And we are evidence that staying stronger one day longer than Kaiser is the only way to get the fair contract you and your patients deserve.”
The National Union of Healthcare Workers represents all Kaiser mental health professionals in California, but contracts are separate between south and north because Kaiser facilities are managed by separate corporations within the Kaiser framework. The NUHW members see struggles for the two contracts having reciprocal effects.
The contract Northern California therapists overwhelmingly accepted over two years ago increased to 7 hours per week the time therapists could devote to patient care duties needing to be done outside therapy sessions, often called “indirect patient care.” Kaiser also committed to hire more therapists and provide more time for initial assessments of children and more pay for bilingual therapists to meet the needs of non-English-speaking patients.
The Southern California therapists are now seeking the same working conditions therapists have in the north, along with pay raises putting them on an equal footing with comparable Kaiser non-mental health workers, and restoration of pensions that Kaiser has denied to Southern California mental health workers hired since 2014.
And when the Northern California contract expires next October, Marcucci-Morris said, “Southern California’s success will lead to our success – thank you for taking this bold action for all of us, to help build the mental healthcare systems our communities deserve!”
Kristin Reimer, a clinical psychologist at Kaiser’s Walnut Creek Medical Center, emphasized the importance of indirect patient care, when therapists prepare for appointments, review charts, call patients back, devise treatment plans, do required documentation, and work collaboratively to make sure patients are really getting the care they need.
Reimer said Kaiser “simply does not understand mental healthcare. They want to run it like an assembly line, with therapists seeing patients back-to-back-to back.”
But instead of learning from the 2022 strike and extending the additional indirect care time won by Northern therapists to their Southern California union siblings, Kaiser is “borrowing from their playbook again, accusing dedicated workers of wanting to spend less time with patients, and insisting they get just 4 hours a week for these tasks. It’s injustice to therapists who want to help Kaiser patients in their recovery, and it’s an injustice to those patients who need therapists to have the time to meet all their needs, and advocate for them.”
Jennifer Browning, a psychiatric social worker at Kaiser’s North Valley Clinic in Roseville, called Kaiser “a serial violator” of California’s laws mandating access to mental health care. She recalled that a decade ago, Kaiser was fined $4 million because patients could not get timely mental health intake appointments.
“Just this past year, they had a $50 million fine, and they still don’t have a plan, and they still have all these patients waiting. It seems ridiculous!”
Kaiser has one therapist for every 3,000 Southern California Kaiser members, she said, while even the North’s current ratio of one therapist for every 2,000 Kaiser members is far from enough to provide timely care, with patients waiting four to eight weeks for return appointments.
“We know we’ll have to fight to keep our indirect patient care time when we start bargaining again next year. So we stand here in solidarity with our siblings in Southern California, and we’re going to say, One Day Longer – “
The crowd chanted back, “One Day Stronger!”
Southern California therapist Anna Vargas told the rally that when their bargaining team asked Kaiser why therapists were denied pensions that all other Kaiser employees have, Kaiser claimed they would be too expensive.
“The thing is, they have the money,” Vargas said. “They have $50 billion in reserves … their priorities are clear: they want us to burn out, and they’re keeping their corporate greed at the expense of our patients.
“We want to go back to work,” she said. “We miss the work we do. But we know it’s not sustainable. It’s an ethical issue, and Kaiser is legally, ethically obligated to have a fair contract for clinicians and for patients.”
NUHW President Emeritus Sal Rosselli recounted the history of union members’ pressure on Kaiser to assure mental health patients would have the same access to care as all other Kaiser patients.
“Two years ago – a 10-week strike! Ten weeks! It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about economics. It was about access-to-care issues. It was about time to take care of your patients, and enough staff to take care of patients and give the therapy they deserve.”
Rosselli said the strike “deeply educated folks in California, including our elected leaders. The strike in Southern California right now is standing on your shoulders,” he told the solidarity demonstrators, “because the support we’re getting politically is unprecedented.”
That support was evident from fellow unionists as well as elected officials whose staff gathered with them.
Keith Brown, executive secretary-treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, told the crowd, “It is just inhumane that Kaiser, with its record profits, cannot come to the table to give our therapists pensions to address the staffing shortages. Enough is enough.”
Brown shared how NUHW social workers helped his family when his mother passed away last year. “I have so much respect for what you do,” he said, “and we are here to say that Kaiser needs to show that same respect to all of you and to settle a new contract now!”
Also expressing solidarity were representatives of San Francisco Jobs with Justice, and representatives of Berkeley Mayor and state Senator-elect Jesse Arreguin, Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, and state Sen. Dr. Aisha Wahab, D-Silicon Valley. Oakland City Council President and Alameda County Supervisor-elect Nikki Fortunato Bas sent a message of solidarity and support.
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