Mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California have approved a four-year contract after a 10-week strike, according to a news release. 

Psychologists, therapists, social workers and chemical dependency counselors at Kaiser who are part of the National Union of Healthcare Workers voted 1,561 to 36 to approve the agreement reached between the company and the union. 

The mental health workers had been on a strike for 10 weeks that ended on Wednesday when a tentative agreement was reached. 

“This contract puts us on much stronger footing to work with Kaiser to help it become a great place to give and receive mental health care,” said Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a licensed clinical social worker for Kaiser in Oakland in a news release. “But any successful collaboration will require Kaiser’s total commitment to devote the resources necessary to meet California’s timely access to care requirements. We expect Kaiser to follow the law, and we expect the state to enforce it.”

The agreement is retroactive to September 2021 and expires in September 2025.

When the strike started in August, mental health workers going on strike said that the way the system was set up, they could not meet patient’s needs the same way non-mental health providers at Kaiser Permanente were able to do. They demanded more resources to provide patients better mental health treatment, and asked for mental health support for themselves, too, including less client-facing hours. 

According to the news release, the mental health workers were able to get some of those demands met. 

In the approved contract, mental health workers will have about two additional hours weekly for non client-facing work, such as charting appointments. Also, Kaiser Permanente has agreed to hire more therapists to better meet the surge of clients. 

The company also agreed to work with therapists on a plan to expand crisis services to nearly all of its clinics and to follow through on wage increases agreed to before the strike started. 

The struggle to achieve parity for mental health care at Kaiser is far from over, NUHW said in the news release. In Hawaii, there is still no settlement to a strike by Kaiser therapists that is now in its eighth week.  

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