By John August, Executive Director, Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions
Can a workplace where employees have a voice through their union make for a stronger business? At a time when many corporations are accelerating their opposition to unions, that’s an important question. Our experience at Kaiser Permanente provides an answer.
Nearly 10 years ago when our Kaiser Labor-Management Partnership was created, it was hailed as a new high road leading toward “labor peace” for the largest nonprofit health care organization in our country while providing a “stronger voice” for Kaiser employees in the decisions affecting their lives and their patients. Under our first five-year contract, those were guiding goals that served us well—they helped us achieve new levels of patient satisfaction as well as worker satisfaction. And we saved Kaiser Permanente significant amounts of money by reducing on-the-job injuries (creating not only safer workplaces, but reducing workers’ compensation costs) and by identifying millions of dollars worth of operational inefficiencies. Our partnership helped turn around entire regions for the employer.
Now, under our second five-year national agreement, we’re working to bring the partnership into a new paradigm that is as much an operations strategy as a labor-management strategy. And our success or failure is going to have a huge impact inside as well as outside the health care industry because Kaiser Permanente is so large—$35 billion in revenue, 90,000 unionized workers, 22,000 managers and 12,000 physicians.
Back in 1997, our national agreement was signed by Kaiser Permanente officials and leaders of our 29 local unions after 80 percent of the rank-and-file membership approved it. It is based on the premise that the people who do the work every day can be of unmatchable assistance in coming up with effective solutions to problems. At its best, the idea is to actively engage the workers in every area of the operation of the health plan—quality of service and care, member and employee satisfaction, business planning, workplace safety, even marketing. From the beginning, our agreement has contained a key admonition saying, “The Partnership should become the way business is done at Kaiser Permanente.” The debate this charge addresses is whether unions can bring added value, not only to the workers and their families, but to the employer, the community, to society. And if we meet that challenge, we’ll become a stronger example for unions, as well as employers, to follow. Kaiser Permanente is recognized as a model for patient care; we want it to be seen also as a model for operations, with measurable improved performance outcomes in a unionized setting.
What we’re now doing is bringing our partnership further into the operations of Kaiser Permanente, creating and supporting changes on the front lines through unit-based teams that are tied directly to performance. We have formal training programs for workers and managers alike so that our partnership principles are integrated at every level of operations. What we’re now doing means more than just giving workers a say in the decisions impacting them, it means they have a chance to work hand-in-hand with managers for better patient care and efficiency.
If we succeed in building our new model, in reaching a new paradigm, it will help answer a very important question: “What are unions and unionized workers doing to help create stronger companies and communities?” And our success will demonstrate to the employer world what those of us in the union world already know: unionized workers can contribute more to a productive society when they are able to have their voices, their experience and their commitment contribute to the way a business functions. It’s called economic democracy and it works!
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John August began his union career as an organizer with District 1199P in Pennsylvania, eventually serving as that local union's president. He was national organizing coordinator for the Teamsters from 1994 to 1995 and later served as an organizing consultant for the Communications Workers of America and the AFT. Just prior to being named executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, he was deputy director of the Health Systems Division of SEIU.
