Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Union Member Audrey King on Unit-Based Teams at Kaiser Permanente



I met Audrey King during a recent trip to Washington DC. The visit continued SHARE's study of union-management partnership in the Kaiser Permanente healthcare network, and how participation makes things better for front-line employees.

Audrey has worked at Kaiser Permanente for 36 years. She has seen the change that Unit-Based Teams has brought to her work there. I thought Audrey had some great things to say, so I asked her if I could record her so SHARE members could hear what she had to say. (Sorry about the noise in the background of the cafeteria!)

Here's a little more about who Audrey is: She's a member of OPEIU Local 2 (one of three union locals representing employees at Kaiser Permanente in the Mid-Atlantic region). Together with the regional quality manager for the KP Labs, Audrey made a presentation to us at their Capitol Hill Medical Center about how the union and management co-sponsors help to make the UBTs successful. (It was cool that every presentation in our day-long visit was made in pairs: a union person and a manager.)