Agreements

In 2018, the Alliance of Health Care Unions reached Labor Management Partnership Agreement with Kaiser Permanente.

Download the 10-page document. 

The 2018 KP-Alliance National Agreement renews and strengthens the Labor Management Partnership to better serve the needs of our members and patients, the organization and the 49,000 workers represented by the Alliance of Health Care Unions. Alliance union members, their managers, and physicians who work with them should know key provisions of the agreement and what it does to help achieve high-quality, affordable health care while creating a great place to work. 

If your union is party to the 2015 Coalition National Agreement, you may be eligible to convert your unused banked sick leave to a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) when you retire from Kaiser Permanente. You can use the Sick Leave HRA to help pay for eligible out-of-pocket medical, dental, vision and hearing care expenses on a tax-free basis.    

The Sick Leave HRA gives you a strong incentive to bank your unused sick time and helps ensure that you will have sick time when you need it. This benefit is separate from and in addition to the Retiree Medical HRA established as part of the retiree medical benefits package in the 2015 Coalition National Agreement. 

See the Retirement Programs section of your Summary Plan Description on MyHR for details:

• Select your region.
• When the Benefits by Employee Group page opens, click on View under Summary Plan Description.
• Once the file opens, click on Retirement Programs from the menu on the left.
• Look for details for the Sick Leave Health Reimbursement Account.

If that benefit is not included in your Summary Plan Description, you are not covered by the benefit.

“The No. 1 reason for the success of our teams has been personal engagement,” says Alan Kroll, a primary care area administrator in Colorado who co-sponsors nine unit-based teams with his labor and physician partners. “Everyone needs to buy into the process to make partnership work.”

Building engagement and ensuring a consistent work experience have been goals of the Labor Management Partnership since the beginning. But, at the same time, there’s been a good deal of variation around these efforts from location to location across Kaiser Permanente, to the frustration of many managers, workers, and KP members and patients.

That’s why the 2015 National Agreement mandates partnership training for everyone, including the mid-level managers and union leaders who guide others. Early versions of the partnership training for mid-level leaders, which will be available this year, have gotten high marks from UBT sponsors and other leaders who have taken it. 

Consistency counts

The agreement calls for “a learning system that supports sustained behavior change, partnership and performance.” This includes joint training and refresher courses—delivered in-person
and/or online—to “achieve the same partnership and employment experience wherever one works in KP.” 

The new training for mid-level leaders will include segments on: interest-based problem solving examining the forces that support or undermine partnership core partnership behaviors and principles the strategic importance of the LMP 

Joint training is key 

The programs are designed to develop successful leaders who can model partnership and spread successful practices—and to ensure that the managers or union representatives helping teams have what they need to support those teams.

“It is very powerful for managers and union leaders to be in training together,” Kroll says. “It sends the message that everyone is important, and sets a foundation to work from when an issue gets stuck.”

The training served as a reminder that good partnership practices also are good leadership practices. 

“People want to hear from their leaders,” he says, and to “know what issues we are dealing with and that we can help remove obstacles.”

See the 2015 National Agreement, section 1.E, Education and Training (pages 31–33) for additional information.

Beyond excellent wages and benefits, the 2015 Coalition National Agreement sets industry-leading standards for quality, service, affordability, workplace health and safety, and professional development. Coalition union members, their managers, and the physicians who work with them should read the agreement and be familiar with its intentions and the path it lays out for achieving high-quality, affordable heatlh care while creating a great place to work.