After 196 days on strike, Kaiser mental health workers ratified a new four -year contract on Thursday, approving an agreement that provides wages and retirement gains and offers a little breathing for administrative tasks.
Although the members of the National Union of Health workers can vote on the proposed pact with their employer until a minute before midnight, the result was a fatal conclusion shortly after the two parties announced a provisional agreement on Sunday.
Thursday at 4 p.m. Thursday, 1,937 had voted for approval and only 31 against. Since the negotiation unit has approximately 2,400 members, there was no means that a late increase in any vote delivers a last minute return to the picking lines.
A synopsis of the main points of the contract published by the NUHW earlier in the day stipulates that employees, including therapists, social workers and others, will receive 5.5% of increases, retroactive in September 2024 and bonuses of $ 2,500 when the contract is officially ratified. Another 5.5% payroll is due in October, with an increase of 5% in 2026 and 4% in 2027.
These increases are 1 percentage point greater than the last publicly disclosed offer of Kasier listed online, which is dated February 12, 2025.
In his own statement Thursday, Kaiser seemed to see the change in compensation as a little victory.
“The union demanded salary increases that would have mean wages that were almost 40% above what others are paid in southern California,” Kaiser said.
Retirement services also changed. Throughout the negotiations, Kaiser brought to offer mental health workers in Southern California a 401 traditional savings plan (K) with an annual contribution of 6% and a correspondence on up to 3% of employee wages. But the members of the union said they wanted a traditional pension plan similar to those they said that other Kaiser workers in other employment classifications appreciated.
The two parties landed on a “cash pension plan” rather than on a 401 (K). According to the US Ministry of Labor, cash balance plans guarantee a specified payment on the basis of credits, generally a percentage of the annual salary of each employee, accumulated in a separate account for each worker with a guaranteed percentage which would be paid on this retirement balance.
“The increases and decreases in the value of the regime’s investments do not directly affect the amounts of services promised to the participants,” says the Labor Department.
Workers can also choose to take a lump sum of the full value of the retirement account rather than taking cash payments guaranteed for the rest of their lives.
In comparison, traditional pension plans pay a percentage on what was the final salary of an employee, or on average their best won wages, when they were employed.
While the union lists the switch as an important victory, Kaiser’s declaration minimized the gain, claiming that going to a cash balance sheet leads to “the same cost” as the old plan 401 (K).
And this is probably true in the here and now, the employer providing annual contributions to employees’ accounts, as they would have done with a 401 plan (K). But the union focuses on the future, declaring that the cash balance sheet “moves the financial risk of a slowdown in the employer instead of the employee”.
When the strike began in October 2024, workers were categorical that they received seven hours a week of preparation time each week to spend on administrative tasks, arguing that workers from the same jobs in Northern California already received such an allowance to catch up with e-mails, write patient notes and manage the work behind the behind the scenes that is the overload that writes with patients advisers. At the time, the union said Kaiser only provided four hours a week, and the company said in its own statements that making a much higher price would be equivalent to paid workers so as not to see the patients.
In the end, according to the union, more than six months on picking stake lines won an additional hour of the company. Nuhw says the warranty is now five hours.
Kaiser and the union were distant in their rhetoric on requests for more preparation time. While five hours seem to be a relatively small part of a 40 -hour work week, Kaiser continues to say that the requests were much more important.
“The union demanded that almost 50% of the time of therapists had gone far from the direct care of patients, which would have considerably reduced the number of therapy meetings that we could offer to members,” said Kaiser.
Kaiser said that he had hired more than 13,000 mental health providers across southern California outside her health system during the strike. While the members of the union have constantly accused the medical supplier of not providing a timely care, Kaiser insisted that he was able to meet demand, offering “a 10% increase in visits during the strike”.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
