Stories

Interest-based bargaining involving worker, manager and physician representatives from across Kaiser Permanente is a cornerstone of the partnership.

Regaining control: Shannon Cazinha (left), UBT development consultant, worked with management co-lead Linh Chau (center) and union co-lead Fairy Mills (right) to help their Northwest pharmacy team make improvements that gave members more control over their work.

To truly reduce workplace stress and burnout, workers must have the power to make changes that improve their departments, says Ron Ruggiero, president of SEIU Local 105 in Colorado.

Wendy Watson manages stress through vigorous exercise. 

Katie Richardson, MD, master juggler: pediatrician, director of Physician Experience for the Colorado Permanente Group, the mom of an 11-year-old daughter—and expert stressbuster.

Solving problems together as a team, such as this one in Georgia, can help keep stress and burnout at bay. 

The Woodland Hills Intensive Care Unit has built a speak up culture with interdisciplinary rounds on patients. As a result, the team has high morale, low turnover—and its patients suffer fewer hospital-acquired infections.

Southern California's Biohazards band, extending partnership tools into music-making. 

Joan Thayer, a lead cardiology nurse and member of UFCW Local 400, gets a group hug from colleagues at a recent UBT fair. 

Juan Piantino, MD, shares ideas with Debbie Newcomb, an electro-neurodiagnostic technologist and UFCW Local 555 member.

KP workers attend a 40th anniversary Voters' Rights March during 2005 National Agreement bargaining in Atlanta.