Mental health workers strike against Kaiser Permanente in Southern California

By Robert Ilich, CNN

(CNN) — More than 2,000 unionized mental health workers in Southern California went on strike against Kaiser Permanente on Monday after the two sides failed to reach a new labor agreement.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) — which represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii, including 4,700 mental health workers — picketed outside Kaiser facilities in Los Angeles, San Diego, Anaheim and Fontana, seeking an increase in salaries, restoration of pensions and increased staffing.

When announcing the impending strike last week, the union cited its 10-week strike in Northern California in 2022, which resulted in higher wages, better working conditions to improve patient care and prevented rapid staff turnover. Union members on strike in Southern California have said their demands are line in with what Kaiser has provided to the majority of its workforce.

“Unless we strike, our coworkers are going to keep leaving and our patients are going to keep struggling in an underfunded, understaffed system that doesn’t meet their needs,” Josh Garcia, a psychologist for Kaiser in San Diego, said in a press statement from the NUHW.

Kaiser, one of the nation’s largest non-profit healthcare providers, is required by law to provide mental health services to its members even with the workers on strike.

A spokesperson for Kaiser told CNN that the NUHW has been “slow-walking negotiations” and said the network will continue to negotiate with the union.

The strike comes as employment in the mental health field — for psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, psychiatric aides and social workers — is expected to grow three times faster than the average US job position, according to CNN’s analysis of data released in September by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A survey in 2022 from CNN in partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that nine out of 10 US adults believe the country has a mental health crisis.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Jeff Winter contributed to this report.