Therapists in California and Hawaii Are Striking for Mental Health Care

[Omaha Steve]

The strike is the latest example of social justice unionism in the era of corporate health care.

By Dana Simon TODAY 5:30 AM

By the end of this week the 2,000 California mental health therapists, psychologists, social workers, and chemical dependency counselors who are part of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) will have been on strike for 27 days to demand that their employer, the health care giant Kaiser Permanente, provide timely and good care for their mental health patients.

Five days before the August 15 start of the strike, the mental health workers told Kaiser that they were in agreement with the corporation’s wage proposals. But, they said, improvements in wages and benefits did not address the fundamental issue that would send them to the picket lines: chronic understaffing and access problems for their patients. On August 29, their peers in Hawaii also went on strike. They had joined together as a union also with NUHW four years ago, animated by care access issues. The union’s demands in both states focus on their patients’ needs.

Access to mental health care for Kaiser patients has deteriorated during the pandemic. Throughout the US, rates of depression and anxiety have soared, but NUHW members report that Kaiser staffs just one full-time-equivalent therapist for every 2,600 members in Northern California and approximately one mental clinician for every 5,500 patients in Hawaii, despite the corporation’s having reported an $8.1 billion net profit last year. Saddled with unrelenting caseloads that leave patients routinely waiting four-to-eight weeks between appointments—in violation of a new state law that requires follow-up appointments be provided within 10 business days—therapists are leaving Kaiser in search of places to practice where they can better provide care to patients.

FULL story: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/california-therapists-strike-kaiser-nuhw

Dana SimonDana Simon works as a union organizer with the Massachusetts Nurses Association. He can be reached at [e-mail].