What Kaiser Permanente is up to now

New 09-02 (events of 09-01): the AI fight jumped bargaining units, and the new one is ten times larger. California Nurses Association/National Nurses United — the 25,000-nurse general-RN unit, distinct from the ~2,400-clinician NUHW mental-health unit tracked here since March — held informational pickets at 22 Kaiser hospitals across California, demanding contract language requiring new technologies be "tested, regulated, and subject to nurse input" before deployment, alongside safe-staffing demands. Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Jose, Walnut Creek, Fremont, Redwood City, Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles and eleven more. Kaiser says its technology is meant to "support nurses rather than replace their clinical judgment" and that these principles are "already written into" the CNA contract — a claim this round has not tested. CNA is EARLY in bargaining and says the point is pressure "before staffing and AI protections are settled." On the legislative side: AB 2575 and the other tracked California bills have NOT moved past "ordered to engrossing and enrolling" (08-31), verified 09-02 against the Legislature's own status pages. Newsom has until roughly 09-30. New 08-30: the bill Kaiser and the California Hospital Association oppose got harder to kill and harder to pass in the same move. AB 2575 (Ortega) failed its first Senate floor vote 18-10 on 08-28, was saved same-day by a 40-0 reconsideration, and -- because it was AMENDED when reconsideration was granted -- went back to SECOND READING rather than straight to a repeat third-reading vote. As of 10:00 ET on 08-30 it sits on the Senate's second-reading file, "in floor process," needing both that reading and the repeat vote before the 08-31 constitutional adjournment. On the labour side: no weekend movement in the algorithmic-triage dispute -- no new bargaining session, no strike notice, no Rogers Behavioral Health response; NUHW's own newest post is 08-24, older than the American Prospect piece already on file. New 08-29: the bill it is fighting nearly died and was revived. California AB 2575 -- the liability shift for AI-caused clinical harm that Kaiser and the California Hospital Association oppose -- FAILED its Senate floor vote 18-10 on 08-28 and was granted reconsideration 40-0 the same day; as of 08-29 there has been no second vote, with two legislative days left before adjournment. Kaiser's own spokesperson, for the first time on the record, tied the AI-triage dispute to active NUHW bargaining (The American Prospect, 08-27), and a second health system -- Rogers Behavioral Health, with intake vendor Limbic -- surfaced with the same clinician complaints and the same union. Two more California bills it has not publicly opposed are now on the Governor's desk: AB 1979 (consumer health chatbots under the state medical-privacy act) and SB 503 (clinical-decision-support AI bias-tested every three years). New 08-23: the first real movement on this actor since 08-14, and it came from an investigation plus a bill rather than from the bargaining table. Capital & Main (08-18, verified this run) reports a Kaiser Northern California mental-health triage team shrank from NINE clinicians to THREE as an automated e-visit screening tool — in place since 2023 — took over the work, with weeks-long care delays, missed self-harm and suicide-risk flags, and patients rerouted to apps and call centres. That is the first hard staffing ratio this map has had for the pattern the NUHW complaint alleged in late July. Alongside it, California AB 2575 (Ortega, "Health care services: artificial intelligence") was read a second time and amended on 08-21 and sits in the Senate floor process — verified against the Legislature's own record, not the coverage. It would protect workers who override an AI clinical recommendation and shift liability for AI-caused patient harm onto developers and facilities. Kaiser opposes it, alongside the California Hospital Association. The bargaining track itself remains silent since 08-14. New 08-16: no further movement — 08-16 was an explicit-zero Sunday for the mental-health lens (NUHW's own site and Kaiser's bargaining hub carry no weekend updates; both ledger entries, the 08-11 start date and the "August 11 to 14" window close, remain `passed-silent`, re-checked directly again during the 08-17 reconstruction sweep with still no outcome posted by either party). Standing picture below holds unchanged since 08-15. Kaiser's own stated mediation window with NUHW ("August 11 to 14") reached its scheduled close today with still no public outcome from either party — checked directly against both channels. A new dated- expectation entry (kaiser-nuhw-mediation-window-close) now tracks this specifically, distinct from the 08-11 start date, which already resolved `passed-silent` on 08-12 (see prior read below). The three named sticking points (AI-replacement language for the E-Visit triage tool, layoffs/outsourcing, sole clinical-model discretion) remain unresolved either way. Prior read (08-12), for continuity: the NUHW mediation's 08-11 start date resolved `passed-silent` — checked three times through the day against both parties' own channels, neither posted a readout confirming the session convened. This exact dispute has a 2025 precedent for a scheduled mediation round going quiet mid-stream, so the silence was read as itself worth recording, not assumed benign. The clearest same-company AI-contrast on the board: the labor fight over AI in BH triage (the kaiser-ai-clinician-backlash arc) alongside AI it ships successfully — MRI waits cut up to 60%, mammography risk AI. One thin single-source claim that the surveillance complaint spread to advice-line nurses (WSWS 07-21) — needs a second source.

as of 2026-09-02