Kaiser Mental Health Care Workers Are on Strike for Safe Staffing Levels
At Kaiser Permanente in California, 2,000 mental health care workers have been on strike since August 15. They say Kaiser consistently fails to provide adequate staffing and wages, with patients waiting weeks or months for a second appointment.
Two thousand mental health care workers with the National Union of Healthcare Workers walked out August 15; their contract has been expired since September 2021. (National Union of Healthcare Workers / Twitter)
Psychologists, social workers, therapists, and chemical dependency counselors are in the ninth week of an open-ended strike at Kaiser Permanente in Northern and Central California.
The 2,000 mental health care workers walked out August 15; their contract has been expired since September 2021. They’re members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which split from SEIU in 2010.
NUHW says Kaiser has failed to provide the staffing and wages to retain adequate and diverse staff — yielding unsustainable workloads and dangerous understaffing. After a mental health intake visit, even patients in crisis may wait weeks or months for a second appointment.
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