Nearly 2,400 mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente facilities are poised to strike Monday amid contract talks and allegations of a “broken” system of care.
Kaiser officials, however, accuse the union of “slow walking” the negotiation process and planning to strike before labor talks even began.
“We want to be with our patients, not on a picket line, but we can’t keep working in a system that treats mental health care like an assembly line job and denies us the time and resources to provide the care we know our patients need,” Jessica Rentz, a Kaiser therapist in Fontana, said in a statement released by the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
According to the union, the impacted workers include psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, addiction medicine counselors, licensed clinical counselors and marriage and family therapists who “provide behavioral health care for Kaiser’s 4.8 million members in hospitals, clinics and medical offices (and) home care settings from San Diego to Bakersfield.”