Stories

Left to right: Hal Ruddick, executive director of the Alliance of Health Care Unions, and Steve Shields, senior vice president, National Labor Relations and Office of Labor Management Partnership. 

LMP tri-chairs attend 2021 KP-Alliance National Bargaining. Left to right: Hal Ruddick, executive director, Alliance of Health Care Unions; Steve Shields, senior vice president, National Labor Relations and Office of Labor Management Partnership; and Jim Pruitt, vice president, LMP and National Labor Relations, The Permanente Federation. 

Alma Salazar, a licensed vocational nurse and member of United Steelworkers Local 7600, vaccinates a  young patient at the Fontana Medical Center in Southern California.

Racial justice is one of several bargaining topics this year between Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance of Health Care Unions. Above, members of United Steelworkers Local 7600 participate in a memorial vigil for George Floyd in June 2020.

Clockwise from top left: Valery Robinson, president, USW Local 7600; Janet Liang, executive vice president, group president and COO, care delivery, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals; Denise Duncan, RN, president, UNAC/UHCP; Chris Grant, executive vice president, COO, The Permanente Federation.

In a scene from 2018 National Bargaining, Frank Hurtarte, senior vice president, Human Resources, Southern California, and Charmaine Morales, executive vice president, UNAC/UHCP, listen intently to a presentation. Both are participating in national bargaining this year between KP and the Alliance.

Unit-based teams are one of the key innovations of the Labor Management Partnership, creating a platform for consistently involving frontline workers in problem solving. Shown here, members of the South Sacramento Medical Center Emergency Department clerical UBT, which launched a project to use portable laptops to capture patient signatures at intake and discharge, saving nearly $90,000 in 2016. 

"I look at (partnership) as a marriage," says Denice L. Washington, an OPEIU Local 29 business representative who is the labor co-lead to the Northern California LMP Steering Committee. "You have to work at a marriage every day. Don’t take it for granted....There are hard conversations that have to happen, and you’ve got to have the ability to trust your partner and be open and receptive to ideas."
Visit the Humans of Partnership page for more 20th anniversary reflections. 

Empowering health care workers, managers and physicians to come together in teams and improve performance has been the crown jewel of the Labor Management Partnership. 

Facility and regional ratings, as well as more rigorous team assessments, are part of the 2015 National Agreement.