How To Win a Living Wage: Strike, Protest, Persist

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FEATURING REV. JENNIFER GUTIERREZ - Two thousand four hundred mental health workers with Kaiser Permanente in Southern California are celebrating a major union win after more than half a year on the picket line. The workers, who are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers won a contract that is retroactive to September 2024, that includes a 20% pay raise over four years and a new pension plan. 

The struggle was tough, with union members engaging in civil disobedience, risking arrest, and suffering without work for more than six months. The strike came just as the demand for mental health therapies in Southern California skyrocketed with tens of thousands of people losing their homes to wildfires. 

The success of Kaiser’s mental health workers comes at the same time as more than 55,000 Los Angeles County workers went on strike in late April, and, just as the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution raising the minimum wage for tourism workers to $30 an hour, the highest minimum in the nation.