JJ Cassa (left) and Joshua Holt (right), co-leads of the Staffing and Patient Care subgroup, give a thumbs up during Alliance national bargaining in Portland, Oregon.
Tentative agreements reached at bargaining session
Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance of Health Care Unions met August 5 to 7 in Portland, Oregon, to continue negotiating a new national agreement. The current national agreement expires September 30, 2025.
During the session, the parties traded comprehensive economic proposals. Labor and management leaders continued to discuss economic counterproposals that include across-the-board wage increases. Both parties have put forward full salary and benefits packages.
The full bargaining team, known as the Common Issues Committee (CIC), approved 2 economic tentative agreements to enhance the retiree medical benefit premium subsidy in all markets and to provide the retiree medical premium subsidy in Washington for the first time. Three more tentative agreements were approved to remove copays for allergy shots, cover hearing aids in markets without coverage, and eliminate durable medical equipment co-insurance.
Additionally, the bargaining team approved 25 recommendations as tentative agreements from the 3 bargaining subgroups.
The bargaining subgroups presented a range of proposals to the CIC focused on these priorities:
- AI (artificial intelligence) and technology
- Labor-management partnership effectiveness
- Staffing and patient care
AI and technology
This subgroup is developing guidelines for partnering on the use of AI and emerging technologies. This includes training employees to use new technologies and educating them on their effective use. By working together in partnership, Kaiser Permanente and Alliance unions will help ensure technology and artificial intelligence deliver high-quality, affordable care for our members and patients.
The CIC reached the following tentative agreements:
- Establish a joint labor and management taskforce on AI and technology
- Leverage unit-based teams to involve workers in driving innovation
Partnership effectiveness
The Partnership Effectiveness subgroup proposed several ways to strengthen the Labor Management Partnership. They developed recommendations to enhance unit-based teams, LMP education and training, and measuring the effectiveness of the partnership above the UBT level.
The CIC reached the following tentative agreements:
- Verify the performance of teams through random sampling.
- Consult learning experts to develop methods for measuring the effectiveness of LMP training.
- Establish a joint committee to create a process to measure the LMP’s effectiveness above the UBT level.
- Advance and sustain Just Culture, an operational strategy that supports speaking up and reporting mistakes and near misses.
Spotlight: Staffing and patient care
This subgroup is tasked with developing recommendations in the following areas:
- Review existing agreements on staffing, backfill, budgeting and flexibility, and identify gaps and barriers to effective implementation.
- Recommend ways to remove barriers to full implementation of the agreements.
- Plan for future employment needs and improve forecasting and preparedness for shifts in staffing and patient care.
- Develop guidance for working in partnership to establish or change work schedules that meet the needs of patients, Kaiser Permanente, and employees.
The CIC reached the following tentative agreements:
- Develop staffing dashboards for markets to enable easy access to critical staffing data. Subgroup members were inspired by a successful pilot at Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center and other Southern California facilities.
- Propose escalation steps to address implementation issues that can’t be resolved by staffing committees.
- Create toolkits and educational materials to support staffing committees and the joint staffing process.
- Identify criteria and factors for hard-to-fill positions.
What’s Next
The next national bargaining session is scheduled for August 19 to 22 in Los Angeles.
Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance are part of the Labor Management Partnership, the largest and longest-running partnership of its kind in the United States.