KP Coalition National Negotiations Update

National Bargaining Begins with first 3-day session in Oakland

Two-and-a-half days of training and work April 6-8

April 8, 2010 – Leaders of Kaiser Permanente, the Permanente Medical Groups, and more than 170 union members from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions met this week in Oakland our their first three-day national bargaining session.   After a half-day of context-setting presentations and another half-day of training in the interest-based bargaining process, the group broke into four sub-groups to begin tackling specific issues.

The negotiations will be conducted by a 111-member Common Issues Committee (CIC).  The CIC is composed of 68 union members and 43 KP leaders.  In addition, local unions brought more than 100 frontline observers to the meetings.

Setting the Context: On behalf of our unions, Coalition Executive Director John August and SEIU-UHW Trustee Dave Regan made presentations on behalf of the Coalition setting the context for national negotiations.

“We need to make partnership better, stronger, more effective,” said August.  “We need to more fully take on issues like growth, sustainable improvement, and quality of life in the workplace.  We are starting to hit our stride of producing measurable improvement through unit based teams.  We must lead changes in the country, not just react to them.”

Regan called on KP and union leaders to seize the opportunity posed by health care reform.  “Health care reform is really a singular event.  In our lifetimes nothing like this will ever be replicated.  There are 32 million people who are about to get health care – what are we going to do about that?  The land rush is on; we have an incredible opportunity.”

In addition, Regan called on union and management leaders to be tough on “low road” competitors.  “We should not accept reimbursement systems that don’t properly reward quality, electronic records, workplace safety,” and other areas where KP excels.

Regan contrasted KP with “bottom feeder” anti-union hospital chains with poor patient care records.  Why should low-road providers, he asked, receive the same reimbursements as KP?

“We have a historic opportunity and obligation to lead,” said August.  “Our KP members and future members need us to perform and do well individually and as an organization so they can have access to the best care.  If we use our assets wisely we will deliver on our promise to our members, our workforce, and our country.”

KP executive vice president Bernard Tyson told the group, “One of the best assets we have is our people, and we’re not bashful about that.”  He called the formation of thousands of unit based teams “an incredible strength and testimony” to the power of the people of KP.  He called on participants to consider, in the course of negotiations, our “stewardship role to make sure we have a sustainable organization in our future.”

KP Chief Financial Officer Kathy Lancaster outlined the achievements, challenges, and opportunities KP faces in the coming years:  the thousands of improvements made by unit based teams, the incredible effort that resulted in bringing annual cost increases down to only 4.4% in 2009, and the achievement of operating margins sufficient to fund capital investments, technology, and long-term liabilities including rebuilding pension funds.  The challenge: to sustain these achievements over time, while the economy continues to teeter, along with the job market, and the stock market (which is a source of income for capital investments as well as pension funds).

Training in interest-based bargaining:  Par-ticipants spent Wednesday morning receiving interest-based bargaining training in their sub-groups.  This is the negotiating model the parties used to create the 2000 and 2005 National Agreements.  Rather than the traditional bargaining process of each side issuing demands and proposals, the interest-based process starts with each side clearly articu-lating their interests.  Then the sides try to identify joint interests; then, they work together to craft options and solutions to meet all the interests.

The interest-based process also aims to preserve and improve workplace relationships and our Partnership. Winning and losing is replaced by joint problem-solving. While the process requires a greater initial investment of time and training, the results from the past two rounds of National Bargaining (in 2000 and 2005) were worth the investment.

Issue sub-groups: For Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, the CIC broke into four issue sub-groups (the fifth bargaining issue, wages and benefits, will be addressed by the full CIC in late May).

Besides wages and benefits, the four bargaining issues are:

Developing the Labor Management Partnership: the group’s charge is to develop specific recom-mendations on what Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions should focus on, as partners, over the next several years

Attendance: the sub-group’s charge is to develop specific recommendations on programs, processes and strategies which will result in significantly improved absenteeism rates, and improve the health of our workforce.

Performance improvement and performance sharing programs:  the group will address the question, how might we achieve and sustain superior organization performance, and how we can strengthen the connection between performance and reward at the unit/department level?

Workforce planning and development:  the group will develop specific recommendations on how we can develop an effective needs assessment process and ensure adequate funding to deliver on our workforce planning and development goals.

On Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, the CIC subgroups began the work of identifying union, management, and joint interests in their issue area.  Once that work is complete, they will examine data and generate options to address interests.  By the conclusion of the third session of national bargaining on May 6, each subgroup will report a joint recommendation to the entire CIC on how the next national agreement will address their issue area.

The final bargaining session, May 25-27, will be dedicated to finalizing these recommendations and completing the economic issues (wages and benefits), to conclude the tentative National Agreement and agree on the scope of local bargaining.  The tentative agreement will then be reviewed in June by the Union Delegates Conference and KP leaders, after which local bargaining will begin.  After local bargaining is concluded, union members will vote to accept or reject the national and local tentative agreements as one package.

For more information: www.bargaining2010.org.