Union Card-Check Processes at Kaiser Permanente Northwest: A Manager's Perspective
By JAMES PRUITT

Union membership at Kaiser Permanente Northwest has grown steadily in the past 25 years. This is largely attributable to neutral card-check agreements (NCC). In the process, the parties have developed a written and unwritten code of practice surrounding NCC.

The Company and Unions
The Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program is a prepayment, group practice plan that provides or arranges healthcare services for voluntarily enrolled members. It serves about 8.4 million subscribers in several regions throughout the United States. Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW), which began in 1942, operates in Oregon and Washington. KPNW has about 450,000 subscribers; it runs an acute care hospital, 26 medical clinics, and 15 dental clinics.

KPNW has about 8,000 employees. It has labor agreements with several unions, including locals of the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the Oregon Nurses Association, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Guild for Professional Pharmacists, and the International Union of Operating Engineers.

Union Growth
Union membership at KPNW grew nearly 300 percent in the last generation. From a base of about 2,200 represented employees in 1981, the number has swollen to almost 6,000 in 2004. The percentage of KPNW employees with union representation rose during that period from 55 percent to 75 percent. This increase ran counter to the overall trend in society, which saw union membership slump from 21 percent to about 13 percent. It also surmounted the effect of closure of one of the employer's major hospitals.

The following factors drove the increase in union membership:

Elections
Throughout the 1980's and into the 1990's, unions sought NLRB-ordered elections at KPNW. Such elections provide workers with certain protections according to the National Labor Relations Act. At the same time, an informal process by which Kaiser managers had previously agreed to union expansion became less acceptable as the company grew and faced some difficult financial challenges. Results of these elections were mixed. (See Figure 1.)

From 1981 to 2004, three successful elections netted unions about 514 employees. These employees participated in elections that were free of employer interference. There were no company-sponsored meetings, and the voting unit (bargaining unit) was shaped without involvement of the NLRB.

Elections failed in four instances, leading to a delay in the unionization of nearly 800 workers. The largest of the affected groups was the unit of professional employees, which attempted self-organization through government-assisted elections twice during this period. After 2000, a NCC process was negotiated by the parties, which led to a successful card count for professional employees in 2001. The period's other two unsuccessful elections were also reversed through NCC.

Card Checks
Aside from employer expansion, card checks have been the most reliable method of union growth. Although card-check procedures have deep roots at KPNW, it is in the last 12 years that a sporadic practice has become a steady flow.

KPNW had some experience with card-check processes from 1942 to 1974. This was an era when the National Labor Relations Act did not cover healthcare employees and when union growth at KPNW proceeded informally, often on a "handshake" between union leaders and management representatives. In some situations, it is not clear that there was an initial verification of majority status by unions.

Between 1969 and 1974 several groups, including warehouse employees and appointment clerks, gained representation through some form of NCC. In negotiations leading to the 1974 contract with one local, the parties agreed to language that would recognize the union for additional job classifications provided "a majority of such employees …desire to be represented by the union" (Section 2.3 of the Agreement). For the next eighteen years, no clear record of how to demonstrate that majority was established. In the early 1990's, the union sought to implement this language through card checks and petitions. KPNW refused, viewing its obligation under Section 2.3 as met by an offer to participate in secret-ballot elections.

The NCC Process
Decisions by arbitrators Leslie Sorensen-Jolink and Carlton Snow reviewed this dispute in 1992 and 1993. The decisions were not clear endorsements of NCC, but they were supportive of it-provided, as Snow wrote, that care is taken to make sure the results are "valid and reliable." As a result, the following safeguards have been established:

1. Union cards must be clear in their designation of a union as the unit's authorized representative;
2. Cards must be dated, and may be revoked up to the date of the actual card check; and
3. Signatures must be independently verified (federal mediators have been used for this purpose).

In the last ten years, the unions and KPNW have tended to rely less on elections and more on NCC. A NCC process enables unions and the employer to advance their own interests while addressing each other's interests. KPNW's managers want bargaining units that align with the business organization and that are crafted with attention to the relatedness of certain jobs. Unions want to define groups in which they can secure a majority of signed cards.

Through NCC, parties at KPNW have avoided the sort of gerrymandering almost inevitable under the NLRB's doctrine on appropriate units. They have established smaller groups, which unions have seen as an opportunity for success and which the employer has accepted as coherent. The parties prefer voluntary, private cooperation to reliance on NLRB case law.

Communicating with Employees
KPNW and its unions have developed agreements on many union-organizing issues, including appropriate bargaining units, selection of neutral verifiers, the timing of NCC campaigns, and the release of employee information. Procedures have not been fully successful, however, regarding how to communicate directly with employees during organizing. To date, the company's approach has been to send affected employees a jointly written (KPNW-union) announcement that a card-check drive will be underway in their workplace. The employer has not initiated any meetings with staff.

Shortcomings in this communications approach became evident during a small organizing drive in 2003. Employees opposed to the union did not pay close attention to the campaign despite the union's efforts to personally contact each member of the unit. After the union demonstrated that it had a one-card majority, anti-union employees alleged that they were expecting a secret-ballot election. The affected union and KPNW are working to avoid such problems in the future by developing better ways to communicate with employees.

Valid and Reliable
NCC processes can protect workers' right to organize while avoiding what arbitrator Snow has called the "often contentious and technical process that results under federal labor law." The card-check practice at KPNW achieves that end. By developing careful implementation procedures, labor and management can ensure that card-check drives produce valid and reliable results regarding the wishes of affected employees.

JAMES PRUITT is director of labor relations for Kaiser Permanente Northwest. His articles have appeared in Training and Workforce.

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