Su Notches Second Labor Win With Kaiser’s Health-Care Union Deal

Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su is being lauded for helping bring together a tentative labor agreement for Kaiser Permanente workers, the latest example of her assisting in labor disputes that threatened to sideline critical economic sectors.

Late last week, leaders of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions announced they had reached a tentative agreement with the health-care giant just days after Su began visiting the bargaining table, staving off a potential second strike of 75,000 workers across six states and the District of Columbia.

“Collective bargaining works,” Su said during a press conference Oct. 13. “It may not always look pretty but unions have, throughout our history, built the middle class and it’s through agreements like this one.”

Her successful performance in what’s now two large-scale labor disputes may prove wrong critics of her now-stalled nomination to serve permanently as the secretary of labor and those who have questioned her experience as a mediator in labor disputes in comparison to her predecessor Marty Walsh.

But Su’s connections from her past role as California labor secretary may have also helped grease the wheels in both the port and health-care worker disputes based in the Golden State.

Both Kaiser management and the union praised the acting secretary’s role as “instrumental” in helping resolve the dispute. They echoed similar sentiments from Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, who went as far as endorsing Su’s nomination to serve as permanent labor secretary this summer and praised her for keeping “both sides at the bargaining table and focused on resolution” during negotiations between the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union and the West Coast ports.

President Joe Biden took the opportunity to emphasize his nominee’s record in these types of negotiations when Kaiser and the unions announced their deal.

“This isn’t the first time Acting Secretary Su has helped essential workers and their employers reach an agreement,” Biden said in a statement Oct. 13. “She continues to play an integral role helping my administration and workers across this country build an economy that works for everyone.”

Kaiser Deal

While it’s not unheard of for heads of the US Labor Department to get involved in labor disputes of national significance, traditionally there isn’t a specific role carved out for the labor secretary to intervene.

“The president or the secretary of labor or other politicians can try and lobby the parties, encourage them to reach an agreement,” Harry Katz, the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said of the role of labor secretaries generally. “And many Democratic presidents have done that. Secretaries of labor have done that, but it’s not very binding. It’s not very powerful.”

The move to send Su to California to help with the Kaiser negotiations came after the Biden administration flip-flopped on its plans to dispatch Su and White House adviser Gene Sperling to Detroit in early September to help aid the souring contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three.

About 25,000 UAW members have been on strike since Sept. 15.

Biden ultimately joined the picket line, along with Su and Sperling, but the officials agreed to stay out of negotiations.

In the case of Kaiser, Su joined the parties during two 36-hour bargaining sessions held in Oakland, Calif., earlier this month.

The day before the deal was announced, the acting labor secretary was in Las Vegas with Vice President Kamala Harris for an event before flying back to California to be on the ground for the negotiations, a DOL official said.

Su’s outside perspective on the talks and ability to identify their shared goals helped break through the logjam, leaders from both parties said during a press conference held after the deal was announced.

“She was able to get us to articulate where we have commonalities, not about a particular package, but about our interests in the employees, and in health care,” said Steve Shields, senior vice president of labor relations at Kaiser. “So being really grounded in that allows us to really focus in on those other issues and see that we have commonalities there too.”

Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, said the most important asset Su brought was “a fresh set of eyes” that allowed the parties to stay focused.

“She said this is a very important set of negotiations and we are going to grind away until we find a solution,” Regan said. “She really provided that leadership for us.”

Doubts Persist

But despite the public credit given to Su for the Kaiser agreement, some question whether she may have just been in the right place at the right time.

A former White House adviser explained it wouldn’t make sense for the Biden administration to deploy her as a WH representative to Michigan for the UAW talks because the negotiators still appear to be far apart.

“The role of the secretary is to help close a deal,” said the adviser, who requested to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the labor negotiations. “The parties have to battle it out and then when each side understands how much pain they’re willing to experience, then there’s a role for outside forces to get a deal.”

The stakes are also different when comparing the UAW strike to the Kaiser strike, the adviser said. Some of the major sticking points being addressed in the autoworker negotiations include electric vehicle production and long-standing pay issues, which could have broader ripple effects on the president’s green energy agenda.

“The Kaiser Permanente strike is important in a lot of ways. But it doesn’t have major public policy implications,” the adviser said, noting that while a showing from a representative of the White House is significant because it indicates that the president is watching, “the question really is, what’s the detail of what she did?”

In the case of the UAW, Katz also questioned whether Su should be the representative sent by the administration, noting her lack of experience in mediation.

“With Julie Su I just don’t know that she has the particular skills that’s required out of a mediator,” he said.