Kaiser Permanente Labor Partnership Fractures After 20 Years

By Jaclyn Diaz

More than half of the labor organizations that make up the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions will leave the 20-year-old partnership with the health-care provider to create a new, yet-to-be named alliance, the group announced March 27.

Infighting among the coalition’s original 34 unions made continuing with the alliance impossible, leaders of two of the 21 departing unions said. This disrupts a partnership with Kaiser Permananente and its various employee unions that began in the 1990s out of a need to address the company’s workforce and financial situation, labor insiders said.

This split comes during prime bargaining ...