August 6, 2018

Dear Local 30 members,

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, including Local 30, continues to meet with Kaiser management to bargain over a new Partnership Agreement, a proposal of management’s intended to redefine the Partnership relationship between labor and management.  Now that some of the unions that were formally Coalition unions have left the Coalition, Kaiser has decided to take a different approach to bargaining a new National Agreement by first requiring unions to sign on to a new Partnership Agreement. We continue to discuss those terms.

Management’s original proposal for a new Partnership Agreement asked for several concessions from the unions and for the past few months leaders from each of the Coalition unions have been working together to prepare counter proposals intended to reaffirm our commitment to Partnership all while protecting our rights as unions to among other things take such actions as may be necessary to protect our benefits and wages.  While we never plan for such actions without serious consideration, the law allows us to protect the interests of our members and we will not give up those rights in advance.  There is more work to do to find the compromise that will work for both parties and we will stay at it until we can agree.

Meanwhile, the work of Partnership must continue. Our members benefit greatly from Partnership as has the company. Kaiser now leads in many healthcare categories and is also enjoying record earnings as a result of our success and continues to build huge reserves.  All of these things are the direct result of our joint efforts through Partnership and clearly define success by any measure.

It is my hope that we are simply at a place at the moment where we appear to have forgotten why we started all this twenty years ago and that we will get back on track. This Partnership is far to important to all parties to take for granted. We at Local 30 together with all KP unions will continue to push both sides to reach fair agreements and always remember the employees who got us here. We will continue to bargain with this employer and always remind them that our members, their employees are the reason for our continued success and must be treated accordingly.

In unity,

Walter Allen Jr.
Executive Director/CFO