Kaiser Permanente and the union representing more than 80,000 of its employees, including roughly 3,500 in Colorado, have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract that should prevent a strike.
The Service Employees International Union Local 105 sent an email to members in Colorado on Wednesday morning trumpeting a potential four-year agreement that “restores a true labor-management partnership” between Kaiser and SEIU-represented workers. Details about the ratification process are expected to be shared with members later this week.
The agreement would guarantee 3% raises for workers this year and 2% raises with bonuses that could be converted into and an additional 1% raise in each of the next three years, the email says. It would protect workers’ health care and retirement benefits and do away with the prospect of a lower-tier wage and benefit scale for new hires, per the message.
Kaiser Permanente Colorado is the largest health care provider in the state with 640,000 members. After SEIU members voted in favor of a strike earlier this month if negotiations with the company broke down, a spokeswoman for the company’s Colorado arm said that it planned to keep its facilities open if workers were to walk out for an announced week-long picket.
If the new deal is ratified, Kaiser members will not have to consider crossing a picket line to make their medical appointments.
Kaiser officials on Wednesday also celebrated the agreement, which they say positions the company, its employees and its members for a sustainable future that they say will make care more affordable and accessible to Kaiser patients across the country.
“We greatly respect and value our employees who deliver on our mission every day,” Arlene Peasnall, Kaiser’s interim chief of human resources, said in a statement. “This agreement is a testament to the dedication, compassion and skill those employees bring to work every day and demonstrates that Kaiser Permanente and the coalition have a shared commitment to affordability for our members.”
The SEIU coalition that worked on the deal with Kaiser represented employees in six states plus Washington D.C. The group had threatened a weeklong strike that was set to begin Oct. 14, claiming earlier this month that company was not taking the negotiations seriously. Now the two sides are jointly touting a multi-million-dollar workforce development program.
Kaiser’s employees aren’t the only Colorado workers to threaten to strike — or actually walk out on their employers — amid contentious labor negotiations recently. Denver Public Schools teachers went on strike for three days in February. More than 12,000 union-represented King Soopers and City Market employees voted to authorize a strike in March before they reached a new deal with the grocery chain. In 2018, pilots and flight attendants with Denver-based Frontier Airlines threatened work stoppages before eventually signing contracts.
Members of the United Auto Workers union have shut down General Motors facilities across the country in an ongoing strike that started last week.
“American workers are rediscovering the power of the strike as a negotiating tool, forcing employers to respect even the threat of a strike and take it seriously at the bargaining table,” Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, said in a statement emailed to The Denver Post on Wednesday. “There is no question that a credible strike threat gave the unions leverage to reach this agreement with Kaiser Permanente.”
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