An employees union has sued Kaiser Permanente Colorado, asking a court to prevent the combined health insurer and provider from transferring jobs out of state before an arbitrator can weigh in.
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The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Denver, says the contract between the union and Kaiser Permanente Colorado doesn’t allow the system to transfer work done by members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 to other units.
Kaiser allegedly wants to consolidate the work of authorizing hospital admissions at a “care coordination center” in Georgia by late December, the suit says.
Representatives for Kaiser Permanente didn’t provide comment about the lawsuit by Wednesday evening.
Local 7 represents about 1,600 Kaiser employees across 30 facilities in Colorado. It came close to a strike against the health system in 2021. A different union, Service Employees International Union Local 105, did briefly go on strike in 2023.
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About a dozen registered nurses do the type of work the company is looking to transfer, said Matt Shechter, the bargaining unit’s general counsel. Some of the affected employees received other job offers within Kaiser, and others are facing layoffs, he said.
The lawsuit argues that Kaiser Permanente shouldn’t be allowed to move forward with the transfer because arbitrators are reluctant to force parties to undo previous actions. Kaiser and Local 7 have a backlog of disagreements waiting for arbitration, so the jobs could be long gone by the time they can settle this one, Shechter said.
“It could be a number of years,” he said.
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