AFL-CIO/KAISER PERMANENTE: FORM NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP
The AFL-CIO and Kaiser Permanente "announced a nationwideThis is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
pact yesterday that would give unions a voice in Kaiser's
business plans while helping the giant HMO market its services to
union members," SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE reports (DeBare, 4/25).
Under the agreement, Kaiser will become the AFL-CIO's "'provider
of choice,' for its more than 13 million members," although AFL-
CIO officials said the agreement does not specify "how the unions
will promote Kaiser's services to union members and their
families." The proposal, which is "billed as the largest of its
kind in the health care arena," still requires approval from "a
majority of the 50,000 Kaiser employees who are members of 30
local chapters of the AFL-CIO" (Rundle/Burkins, WALL STREET
JOURNAL, 4/25). AFL-CIO President John Sweeny said, "It is my
hope that together we can fully realize the vision our
predecessors had when Kaiser was originally founded in the 1940s
-- an affordable, high-quality health plan for working families."
DETAILS: The agreement would: establish a committee of
senior Kaiser officials and union leaders that would "have a say
in most" of the HMO's major decisions; establish "labor-
management committees at all other levels of the organization";
require the AFL-CIO to promote Kaiser's services to new members;
require that Kaiser "remain neutral during any efforts to
organize one-fourth of its workers who are not currently
unionized"; and require that Kaiser go on record "as aiming to
avoid layoffs of any of its current staff." CHRONICLE reports
that Kaiser will immediately benefit from the marketing
provisions, which will give the insurer "the ability to use the
equivalent of the 'union label' to promote itself against its
formidable for-profit competitors." The unions will benefit from
"the ease with which they will be able to organize within Kaiser"
(4/25).
OTHER BENEFITS: According to the JOURNAL, "the agreement
could bring "an end to a contentious, yearlong struggle between
the AFL-CIO and Kaiser." In 1996, the AFL-CIO "launched a high-
profile campaign" against Kaiser to "protest job cuts and
contract concessions" (4/25). However, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
reports that new pact drew an "adverse reaction" from the
California Nurses Association (CNA), "whose 7,500 Northern
California nurses are locked in a grim contract dispute with
Kaiser" (see AHL 4/17) (Brazil, 4/24). CNA spokesperson Chuck
Idelson said, "It will do nothing to limit the disastrous
corporate initiatives under way at Kaiser, including hospital
closures, dangerous reductions in staffing and reductions in
services and emergency care" (JOURNAL, 4/25).