On Monday, Oct. 21, 2,400 behavior health workers at Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California locations walked off the job in their ongoing struggle for a fair contract. Over the summer, negotiations between the health system and the bargaining committee, represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, failed to close the gap between their proposals, opening the door for a strike. The workers are now well into their second week on strike.

The healthcare giant refuses to bargain seriously with the workers, offering paltry raises instead of agreeing to the workers’ demands for better pay, pensions, and safer staffing levels at the Kaiser mental health clinics in and around Southern California. These gains, the union believes, would allow Kaiser to compete with other health systems, drastically improve patient care quality, and solve many of the scheduling issues that have plagued the health system since before the start of the pandemic.

The union hopes that by striking, they can show management that they are serious about securing a fair contract for their members. Last week, on the first day of the strike, Mel sat down with Chris Reeves and Lisa Caroll, two behavioral health workers who work in Los Angeles and San Diego, respectively, to talk about the state of negotiations, what workers are demanding, and how it feels to be out on the picket line in the struggle for a fair contract.

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Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Lisa Carroll:

I am Lisa Carroll. I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I work at San Diego Medical Center in the ICU. I also am on the executive board for NUHW, the Southern California division, and I also am the medical steward for all the medical social workers that are in the San Diego area, both inpatient and outpatient. I also have a wonderful partner over in Care at home. She’s a new steward and I’ve been mentoring her this past year just because the work is so important, ensuring people up is so important. I’ve been with Kaiser 17 years and I’ve been a steward for 15 of those years.

Chris Reeves:

My name is Christian. I am a registered nurse at Kaiser. I’ve worked there for about six years. I’m a union steward and I’m also a member of the bargaining committee.

Mel Buer:

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Working People. I’m your host, Mel Buer. Working People is a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to.

And please support the work we do at The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. On October 21st, after contract talks broke down, 2,400 behavioral health workers with Kaiser Health System in Southern California walked off the job on strike in a bid to bring their employers back to the table and negotiate a decent contract. In the first week of the strike, the union joined two bargaining sessions with the healthcare provider in an attempt to close the gap between proposals while workers continue to walk the picket lines at multiple locations in Los Angeles and San Diego. Chief among their demands is for Kaiser to secure safe staffing levels and reduce appointment wait times for their patients, as well as bring parity between the Southern California workers and their Northern California counterparts in pay retirement benefits and scheduling.

As it stands, SoCal workers are suffering under worse working conditions than their counterparts in the north. Bargaining for these gains however, has been difficult with the employer consistently bringing unsatisfactory proposals to the table. In a recent press release sent to the media on Monday October 28th, the union provided an update after bargaining once again broke down with Kaiser on the 25th contract. Bargaining has broken off after Kaiser Permanente negotiators on Friday. Once again invited workers to the table only to offer practically nothing new. While Kaiser’s nearly 2,400 mental health professionals are seeking the same amount of time as their counterparts in Northern California for critical patient care responsibilities that can’t be done during appointments, as well as the same pension benefits that Kaiser provides nearly all of its other California employees. Kaiser’s primary new proposal in bargaining on Friday was an additional 25 cents per hour for bilingual workers With me today to discuss the contract negotiations and the strike are Chris Reeves, a psychiatric RN with Kaiser and Lisa Carroll, a licensed clinical social worker and medical social worker with Kaiser. Thanks for coming on the show.

Chris Reeves:

Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you for having us.

Mel Buer:

You guys have been on the picket line all day. How are you feeling after the first day on strike?

Lisa Carroll:

Think physically a little challenged, but I think mentally and emotionally. It was for in San Diego, it was really good turnout, really good energy, really good media coverage, really good political support. So I would say it was a great first day and we even had nurses come out from Unac and a couple clerks come out from Local 30 to walk with us, picket with us during their clocked out time. So it was a really positive first day.

Mel Buer:

Great. How about you, Chris? How was your first day?

Chris Reeves:

I completely agree. It was actually very invigorating. Even though I’m extremely tired, I feel fired up. I think a lot of us really just kind of fed off of each other and really just felt the energy. There was a lot of energy, a lot of passion out there, a lot of frustration that we were able to get out, but it was very inspiring to see everyone come together. We had a really awesome turnout at LAMC today, and a lot of support from the public as well, so that was really nice to see and experience.

Mel Buer:

That’s really great. I think before we get too far into the weeds of the strike itself, I think it would be a really good place to start perhaps maybe to kind of discuss the makeup of the unit. So there are 2,400 behavioral health professionals in this Southern California unit. Can you kind of speak to the types of job titles, professions, what kind of your day-to-Day work looks like within the unit?

Lisa Carroll:

In medical social work, you’ll have people that are social workers in a hospital, you’ll have social workers that are in an outpatient clinic. You’ll have social workers that are working with hospice, home health, palliative care. So one of the reporters today said to me, because I work in the ICU, well what does an ICU social worker do? And I said, all the things that the doctors and nurses don’t do and shouldn’t be doing. I mean, they have medical things that they need to do, but if somebody’s ended up in an ICU, needless to say, either they’ve had an acute event or they have a chronic condition that has brought them there. And so they need social, emotional, financial, legal, psychiatric, behavioral health support as does their family because while the medical folks are putting the person back together again with a plan for stability, I have to do that for their life. So that coincides so that when they leave the hospital, they’re able to see a pathway to supporting themselves, their families, things like that.

Chris Reeves:

Yeah, so I work in the Pan City area. It’s a pretty large service area and it’s made up of two clinics. And among inside those two clinics, it’s an outpatient behavioral health centers and addiction medicine as well, which is made up of licensed clinical social workers, marriage, family therapists, psychiatric nurses, psychologists who are used in a very specific and specialized capacity as well as I think I mentioned psychiatrists, the physicians. So it’s a huge team. It’s everything under the sun. We also have medical social workers as well. And so we’re divided in teams. We have a team of what we call return therapists who are seeing patients. Usually it should be weekly or biweekly, but because of the poor access that our clinic has chronically suffered for many, many years, most patients are only able to be seen once every four to six weeks, sometimes eight weeks, sometimes longer by those return therapists.

We also have a BIOS group who really sees the patients who are more acute. We’ve seen some changes to that too because all those programs are very impacted. And so those are the providers, the social workers, therapists who are providing group services, case management for ongoing and more frequent follow up care for addiction medicine. There are addiction medicine counselors also. We do have physicians that work in that department managing the gamut of substance abuse and obviously psychiatric and substance abuse. A lot of times they go hand in hand. Those are very complex patients. I personally work more so directly with the psychiatrist and supporting them. They have extremely large caseloads. They actually have no caps on their caseloads. And so we have pediatric and adult psychiatrists, some who also have more specialized care such as eating disorder. And so the psychiatric nurses there really support patient messaging specifically all of the messages that are coming in via telephone or call centers as well as the physician emails.

And so our primary role is to complete assessments to provide education, to also do follow-up medication, follow-up, answer questions and address issues. Patients who are experiencing acute episodes, especially if they’re having exacerbations of their symptoms, patients whose symptoms are not well managed on their medications and really in the last several years doing a lot of care management through the phone and through messaging because a lot of our patients are on wait lists and are not able to see their providers. And so that is the bulk of our job. We do work with the interdisciplinary team and we get messages from our therapists and social workers, and we do provide follow-up for patients who have seen their therapists who are having untreated symptoms as related to medication or side effects, things of that nature. So we also have to follow up on those things. And last, I don’t think I mentioned, we do have a team of crisis therapists as well who work in the department, so we also work closely with that group as well.

So just from hearing both of you describe your respective spaces in behavioral health within the Kaiser system, that’s a lot of work to have to pay attention to. That’s a lot of focus on patient care as it should be. Right. I think this is a good place to sort of hone in on what’s been going on in your negotiation since July. So you’ve been negotiating a contract since the end of July, and what you’re asking for in regards to some of your proposals, especially as it relates to caseloads, as it relates to better quality of patient care without, I dunno, burnout ruining the caregiver’s life in terms of just time spent and pay for that kind of work. Lisa, can you kind of speak to some of those proposals and what the union is asking for?

Lisa Carroll:

I think one of the things that I wanted to start with is even before bargaining, the union leadership met with Kaiser leadership and Kaiser initiated that meeting and they asked us, what will it take to restore the partnership with your union? And we were very clear with the same three asks that were consistently repeating, which is in 2015, they unilaterally took away all of our new hires pensions as a punitive action because we had raised the mental health access and denial and lack of care and all the suicides and everything to Sacramento. And so we had to be, I guess, taught a lesson. They refer to it as bad behavior. They think we’re behaving badly again right now. The second part of that is that we are not asking for anything that any of the other labor unions don’t already have. So whether it’s the service and tech units or the nurses units, we’re asking for the same type of wage increases that they’ve received.

And there have been multiple periods of time where we’ve been given nothing five years here a year here. So over time, our wage scale has really eroded. So I know one of the things Kaiser has said in the news is that they’re paying us, I think 18% over market rate. I have no idea what numbers they’re talking about because we have to compete for the same group of people to come work for Kaiser, as does Sharp Scripps and UCSD in San Diego, and they have all equal or exceeded Kaiser’s wage scale. So either somebody’s not doing their job or I don’t know how to explain that, but that’s a real problem. UCSD still offers a pension, so we’re not able to attract, recruit, retain people. One of the things we did in a past contract, which Chris would remember, is we set these pathways so that you could bring in people who weren’t licensed, who could work on their license and earn their hours, and then hopefully that would be a way of attracting and recruiting and retaining employees.

But the workload is so horrific, and the competition is so good that they get their licenses and they leave and they feel really badly about it because they’ve been a part of a team. I think the only thing that we really have going for us is sort of lifeboat mentality. We all have been in this lifeboat together. We have all fought together. We all want to stay together and we want to navigate this lifeboat into better waters, but I can’t stand in the way of somebody choosing to leave where they’re going to get better compensation and a better work life. So for myself as an example, I cover an ICU and a step down unit that’s roughly 40 beds when the pediatric social worker who also covers a telemetry unit is off, I also cover her beds. So I’m expected to cover anywhere from 40 to 80 beds on any given day. And so that’s child abuse reporting. That’s a PS reporting, that’s finding a representative for somebody who no longer can cognitively designated representative and getting access to their funds to pay for long-term care. That’s getting people connected to dialysis centers. That’s getting people connected to transplant coordinators.

We also do a lot of goals of care conversations in my particular area as well as pediatrics, depending on how ill they are. And we have to be able to refer to our home care partners in home health, our palliative care or hospice, their staff has been cut in half as a savings effort for that department, which just means profit. There’s no savings. Kaiser members pay for these benefits and then they’re denied care. And they wanted, Christopher will remember this from the bargaining table, they wanted the hospice people to see five patients a day. Well, I don’t know if you’re aware of how big San Diego County is, but unless they live in the same cul-de-sac, that would actually be physically impossible. And the way the regulations read is that they must be seen by a licensed clinical social worker that there is an assessment that’s required within 30 days, actually really within the first week to 10 days of service.

And so those things are not happening. So that’s actually Medicare fraud, and I don’t know what part of being investigated, they don’t understand, but they’re making this whole thing so very public that we will make things very public too. And it all could have been avoided. We were happy to have this conversation at the bargaining table, but the proposals, well, I wouldn’t even say Kaiser has come back. They’ve maybe proposed two or three things that they’ve spent time on that are fit onto a half of a page. Not a lot of thought went into that. And those offerings are very, wouldn’t you say, Chris? Very 2020 2021. I mean, they don’t reflect the economy that we have in Southern California or the wages necessary to maintain housing and live in Southern California. So that’s what’s been going on at the bargaining table. Our group, NUHW, has just done such a fantastic job working on proposals, trying to come back with counter proposals, trying to achieve agreement.

And pretty much what we get from Kaiser is deny, deny, deny. This is something they keep repeating. We’re happy with the way things are. So they’re happy with three month waits for medical appointments, three week waits, six week waits, three month waits in psychiatry for appointments. This is viewed, our professional group is viewed as a non-money maker. So it’s okay that it’s a factory that churns out and spits out labor people because they don’t want to spend the money. And that sends a very distorted and hurtful message to Kaiser’s members because their purchasing a benefit that they’re not going to receive its deception.

Chris, do you want to speak more about the conditions that you’re seeing in Los Angeles and really about this? Let’s hone in on this conversation about Kaiser’s members are paying for this benefit, and Kaiser itself is making access to this benefit for its membership nearly impossible, while also making the ability for the providers themselves to be able to do their jobs just as impossible. So you would think going to the bargaining table that they would be willing to listen to what I’m sure is quite a bit of negative feedback from their own members as well as these proposals to try and solve these issues from its union membership in order to create a better space of care, right?

Chris Reeves:

Yes. Yeah. So as Lisa mentioned, we prepared vigorously months before we actually were able to get bargaining dates from Kaiser. We actually tried to engage with Kaiser in bargaining in early spring because the conditions for our workers were so bad and for our employees were so egregious, and they did not give us any bargaining dates until basically the start of fall, so July 31st. And so since meeting with them, we’ve brought forward many proposals. And like Lisa said, it’s usually met with either complete silence, rejection, not interested, or we like things the way we are. We’d like to keep the current contract language, but the thing that Kaiser is failing to recognize is the things that they’re doing, it’s not working. Them being fined that record 50 million fine. And I believe it was $50 million, right, Lisa from DMHC, that hasn’t changed much in the last year.

And so to be honest, things have gotten worse. I really truly feel like that has just, it started started things getting worse. It was already bad, but things went from bad to worse because then Kaiser was under the microscope and they started implementing all these different tools to kind of get by and manipulate the system. And so that actually put a lot of hardship on our providers because they had to start doing a lot more documentation and doing all of these tools basically to provide protection to Kaiser, but not necessarily to improve patient’s care, their access to care or the quality of care that they’re receiving. And so you’re right, access is impossible. They are paying for, our patients are paying for memberships, and they’re not able to see providers when they want to as often as they need to. Even they’re not able to see the providers according to the standards their own providers have set.

So the provider might say, please come back to me in two months or three months or six months. And you’re seeing patients who are going well beyond that because there’s no appointments right now, the clinic books appointments about three months out and every Monday a new schedule opens up for the providers on a week by week basis. And by Monday morning we’re completely out of appointments because the patients learn that that’s the day you need to call. And they’re basically fighting in line trying to get that appointment. So by Monday afternoon, they’re all gone, which that shouldn’t be the case. I mean, we’re talking about all the appointments are gone for the next three months. And so that’s when we get messages because those clerks are, they don’t know what to do. They don’t want to tell the patient, we can’t do anything for you.

And so they say, oh, talk to the nurse. Maybe they can get you a sooner appointment, but we don’t have any magic keys or access to appointments that just don’t. So what happens is we end up having to assess them and really say, how sick are you and what can we do right now to put a bandaid on it? I often say that, which has truly been the most difficult thing for me and my job, is putting a bandaid over a bullet wound because I realized as important as the work that we do, it’s just a very small piece. And there are just critical things within the foundation of Kaiser mental health system that is just broken and it’s not working. And so as a result of that, we’ve seen a mass exodus between all medical professionals. We’re talking a lot of therapists, there have been doctors, there have been nurses, people who have come on, they’re like, forget this.

Especially the ones who haven’t been invested and trying to see things get better or who have been here long enough to say, you know what? Things just haven’t gotten better. I’ve been here for a long time. It’s not changing. I’m out. But we’ve had a huge high turnover rate, including providers who have left Southern California to go to Northern California because there are a little bit better staffing and retention tools there, including the pension that was maintained. So it’s very interesting, the ability to do our jobs have gotten significantly more difficult. One of the things that Kaiser has done to address their access is to try and take away patient management time. And they want to tell people, the public, that the clinicians are saying, oh, we want to see our patients less. But the truth is, is that they need that time to do their job.

And we’re not asking for anything different than what Kaiser gives to our colleagues, our counterparts, because that time is important to be able to call patients back and answer their messages to address case management things, whether that’s following up with family or facilities coordinating care, filing the necessary and mandated reports such as filing a child protective service report or an adult protective service report. There’s a lot of things that go that are, it’s a part from the things that we do with the patient. And so our clinicians are really having to choose, am I going to sit there and look at my patient and make eye contact and engage, or am I going to try to do both and try to get this note done because I know I don’t have enough time and we’re basically being treated like an assembly line. We’re really working in these factory-like conditions where they don’t have enough time to do their work.

And so with the time that they’re given and they have to make those decisions, but yeah, it’s pretty terrible. Our patients are waiting months to see their doctors sometimes after they’ve gotten their medication adjustment over the phone, that still doesn’t get them an appointment. It gets what they need address maybe in the moment, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to get them a face-to-face with their provider. And so we’re seeing burnout everywhere, and that’s the reason why we asked Kaiser to come to the bargaining table early on, why we did a lot of preparation on proposals to help address the staffing issues, the workload issues. And then lastly, we are trying to take care of ourselves and our families. We’ve had five years basically of wage increases. We are behind everyone else, and I completely agree with Lisa. I don’t know who is doing the math at Kaiser, but they need to hire someone else.

Mel Buer:

Well, someone who just moved from Los Angeles and who I have a decent job and it’s difficult to plan for a future when you don’t know if you’re going to be able to have a salary that is comparable to the rising cost of living every year over year. I don’t know, man, as kind of a lay person. My mom is in healthcare. And so all throughout my life there have been these sort of at-home conversations about you take care of the workers and the patient care gets better all the time. Right? And it just seems to me as a sort of lay person that this is a logical solution to a serious problem. We’ve seen this problem explode in the age of Covid and what the pandemic did to an already stressed out healthcare system, and especially to the sort of explosion in mental health crises that was accompanied by extreme isolation and these crises both within the workforce at these hospitals and outside of it.

It just seems logical to me that if you want to solve this problem, you would do whatever you could to retain good staff to solve this problem. It just doesn’t. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think I’m sure, and let’s talk about this a little bit, but I’m sure that you’ve had these conversations with folks who are interested in coming to talk to you at the picket line and perhaps before, and any sort of the sort of messaging campaigns that you’ve done about these negotiations. Are you getting that same sense that you’re coming from a rational position from these folks who are outside of the union who are supporting you on the picket line?

Lisa Carroll:

Absolutely. I mean, every single media person that I’ve talked to, every single political party, union party, every single person is like, yeah, we don’t believe Kaiser. We know that they have abundant resources, that they’ve made significant profits and that they’re making a choice not to support their workers. What we did the math today when we were on the line that what they’re paying a scab to come in, one person to come in and do one of our jobs would pay for six people to have the pension. That’s a clear choice.

Mel Buer:

It’s a hard choice. And it’s always a power move, isn’t it? Right. Because when it comes down to it, they can plead poverty all the time. And I hear this on picket lines all over the place that these giant corporations from Kellogg’s to John Deere, from the studios who were throwing rider under the bus last summer and the summer before,

All of them are pocketing obscene profits, like more money than I could ever possibly imagine to have in my life ever. Right? Yeah. In order to do what? So that they can continue to be the bosses really and not seed any power in the workplace, even though consistently across the board, Chris, as I’m sure the workers are the ones who understand the job most intimately and also understand how to fix the problems at the job, not someone sitting in an administrative boardroom at the top of the hospital choosing who to fire. You know what I mean?

Lisa Carroll:

So at the bargaining table, we gave them a calculation on how to plan for how much time a person needs to do these other activities that aren’t the immediate face-to-face therapy session. It was a simple math formula. I mean, I’m not a mathematician. I could understand it. And here you have a table full of people going, I don’t understand. And we’re looking at them going, how do you have your jobs and not understand this? So you’re either lying or you really shouldn’t have the job

Chris Reeves:

That you have. Right, Chris? Totally. And honestly, I really have taken it as I think they’re feigning ignorance. I honestly think that they’re playing games because it absolutely makes no sense whatsoever. And I think that it’s really important for people to realize really what the numbers are, because in math ain’t math, and it really isn’t. Kaiser is the Goliath of healthcare organizations. They have abundant resources and they to fix the issues, and we have given them so many proposals and really have painted a very clear picture of what’s happening within their mental healthcare system. And it really begs the question of, do you really, and to me it’s very clear that they don’t. It’s very clear that they prioritize everything else over mental healthcare for their patients and their members, but they’re not lacking in resources. We did the math for them that it would literally cost them about $2,000 to restore the pension for about 1700 members who don’t have it so that we can be like the 96% of Kaiser members who do have it.

But I think at this point, really it is really begging the question, do you actually care about your employees? And I think that Mel, you made a good, great point because we did really see a significant demand in mental health care and addiction medicine services with the pandemic. It was very interesting because of course there was a critical short staffing in the hospitals, so we did need providers to take care of those patients who were coming in medically ill. And so at one point they were trying to pull the few of us that were working in psychiatry, the nurses to put us in the hospital, which was fine. A lot of us were willing to go if they did the training, but it was like, who’s going to take care of our patients? Because at the end of the day, we saw our first patient before any of these hospitals saw their first patient because people were getting anxious and they were fearful.

And so our demand and our volume had already started increasing before that virus had really reached even our shores, if you will. And so since then, it’s just kind of skyrocketed. People have not only because of the isolation and the different things that happen socially, but they had time on their hands. And social media I think also has been a big influence. And so the things that we were hearing people calling in and saying, I want to get evaluated for anxiety and depression and all these disorders. They heard it on social media. We knew something was happening, we felt the shift. I always go to management and say, Hey, something’s happening here. We’re getting a lot of calls. We let them know our patients are much sicker. We’re having a lot of patients who are struggling with addiction. A lot of people started drinking and using substances during the pandemic to cope, and they just didn’t listen.

We warned them because a lot of times we’re getting those calls first. We’re already seeing it. We have a lot of patients who are learning about A DHD, autism, things like that from social media. We started seeing an uptick, A DHD evaluation started a huge portion of our access. So we absolutely do tell Kaiser about these things very early on. Do they listen? No. Do they prepare for it? No. Do they plan properly or have any insight? No. Things are always rolled out in our department without proper planning. Things that just make absolutely no sense for the workers or for the patients. It’s egregious. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how such a huge organization has such major problems and how things move very slowly. It’s very interesting.

Mel Buer:

Well, everyone’s a number instead of a person instead of a human being, right? From the patients to the workers who are taking care of the patients, everyone is a number and that number brings in a certain amount of profit. And if you can’t bring in that profit, then your number that gets shoved off the end of the Excel spreadsheet, which is just a horrendous way to look at healthcare in this country. And we could have a long, maybe we’ll have you back on with the other healthcare providers that I talked to and just have a long conversation about broadly what this type of system has done to reducing humanity in this country and into these sort of unique, not unique little boxes, check boxes for how much money they can get out of us on an individual basis without actually providing anything in return. Absolutely.

And I don’t mean to be so cynical about it, but it is something where I benefit greatly from mental health services myself and I did during the pandemic and will continue to do, and I did before the pandemic. And I understand how important and crucial this work is. If I didn’t have it then I wouldn’t feel like I could land on my feet after 2021. And I know many, many people in my life just from individuals that I talked to all over the country on picket lines or elsewhere, that also benefit from these services. It’s a no fucking brainer to fund them. And what that means is if you, the workload, frankly, pay the employees a competitive wage, increase the staffing levels, allowing for individuals to feel comfortable in a career where they don’t need to give in to these high turnover rates, then you’re going to see more patients offer more services, make more money.

If that is what you’re concerned about as an administrator is getting butts in seats and people coming through the doors and all of that nonsense to everyone but them, it makes perfect sense to listen to you at the bargaining table and find a way to solve these problems. But as we know, and again, I don’t mean to sound so cynical, but as we know about Kaiser, they don’t listen to their workers and they always end up pushing their workers out on strike to the detriment of everyone involved, which sucks. So I think maybe a good way to sort of end this conversation before we get to the what can my audience do to support you is what is Kaiser’s kind of response to the strike? Are they beyond just the full blown PR machine that always comes out of the corporation when you walk out, have you received any sort of indication in bargaining or otherwise that they’re hearing you and that they want to solve this sooner? Or is it just they shut the doors and you got

Lisa Carroll:

To, we’ll find out on Wednesday when we go back over the weekend, because I’m on the executive board, there is some internal medical advocacy in Southern California and it sounds like they’re willing to make some movement on the wages and also patient management time. But I will believe it when I see it because I feel like this is Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football, but they’re still taking a hard line with the pension because of our bad behavior. That’s literally what they say. And we’re not asking for anything that their unions don’t have. We’re just asking for equity.

Mel Buer:

Yeah. How does that not just immediately tip off some lawyers to honest to God retaliation?

Lisa Carroll:

Honestly unfair labor practice?

Mel Buer:

Yeah. I dunno. Maybe they’ll shoot themselves in the foot and give you guys an upper hand with that because that’s obscene. That’s outrageous. Outrageous.

Lisa Carroll:

And I think they like that tear in the fabric. If you can kind of think about that as a piece of clothing, because as long as they maintain that tear, then they can do the same thing to the other unions. They haven’t, but they want to.

Mel Buer:

Yeah, they can threaten that, look what we did to these professionals that we can do to you tell the line kind of thing.

Chris Reeves:

Yeah, I still think, I just feel like their response, to be honest, I’ve been hopeful throughout this whole thing, even in their first talks that they wanted to work with us, but I’ve seen the complete opposite. And so like Lisa said, I’ll believe it when I see it because right now all we’ve seen is them just to try to cover up what’s going on. Them being very deceitful them trying to be very confident saying, oh, we got this patients, don’t worry if your provider’s out on strike, we’re going to have other places where you can go for your care. In our vast external provider network, they’re calling patients and they’re saying, oh, well, do you want to just wait for your provider to come back? They’re doing the documentation that they think is going to protect them, but I feel like they’re doing all the things except for actually doing what.

They’re exactly everything except for the right thing. I think that’s well said because they can end this very quickly, but it doesn’t seem like they want to. They’re closing schedules for weeks out. They’re telling patients about their comprehensive plan. They’re buckling down telling people that they’ve actually, they haven’t taken any things away and they’ve offered all of these things, but they haven’t addressed the issues. They haven’t brought anything meaningful to the table at all whatsoever. Many days they come to bargaining without absolutely nothing. We ask them, do you have anything for us? No, it’s very curt and it’s very obvious that they’re not taking it seriously. But I think today, I think that we show them that we’re forced to be reckoned with. I don’t think that they anticipated the number of workers that said enough is enough. I did want to mention too, one thing that everyone can do, because this is a huge sacrifice for everyone.

And so if they want to help and support our cause, they can go to home.nw.org. That’s the main page for our campaign website. And there is a way to donate to hardship funds for Kaiser patients. There is a way for them to share their stories and a link to Kaiser Deny website so they can really actually tell the public exactly what’s been going on, how hard it’s been, how hard it has been to get appointments or services that they’ve requested or that they need. So that’s a huge way for people to support and bring awareness to what’s really truly going on at Kaiser.

Mel Buer:

Lisa, is there anything else you wanted to add? Is there a strike fund for striking workers or do you not have

Lisa Carroll:

Something? It’s all through the exact same resources that Chris just reviewed.

Mel Buer:

Okay.

Lisa Carroll:

Great. And I always say just call Greg Adams and tell him what you think. The more people that blow up his phone, the better.

Mel Buer:

That’s great. That’s great. Honestly, that would be great. Final thing, picket locations for anyone who wants to come join you on the picket line, there’s one in la, at least one in LA and one in San Diego.

Lisa Carroll:

Aren’t those also on the website?

Chris Reeves:

Yes, those will be on the website tomorrow. We are going to be in Woodland Hills, and so we’re expecting a large turnout in Woodland Hills, but that will also be every location. That’s going to be a day of action. It’ll be listed on our website tomorrow, will Beland Hills.

Mel Buer:

Okay. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience before we break for the night?

Lisa Carroll:

Oh, thank you. It was a nice conversation. I really appreciate your awareness.

Mel Buer:

Thanks.

Chris Reeves:

That’s my dog giving the last two raw. Yeah.

Mel Buer (44:31):

And as always, I want to thank you all for listening and thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got there for our patrons and go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the real newsletter so that you can never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. Once again, I’m Mel Buer and with much love and solidarity, I’ll see you next time.

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Mel Buer is a staff reporter for The Real News Network, covering U.S. politics, labor, and movements and the host of The Real News Network Podcast. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and others. Prior to joining TRNN, she worked as a freelance reporter covering Midwest labor struggles, including reporting on the 2021 Kellogg's strike and the 2022 railroad workers struggle. In the past she has reported extensively on Midwest protests and movements during the 2020 uprising and is currently researching and writing a book on radical media for Or Books. Follow her on Twitter or send her a message at mel@therealnews.com