On March 12, 2010, the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions will open its annual Union Delegate Conference in Los Angeles. We have an advance registration of more than 600 people, which will make this the largest gathering in the history of the Coalition. We’re jumping into cyberspace for the first time with this conference, too—so even if you can’t attend in person, you can be there virtually by checking out the live posts to the partnership’s blogs at LMPtalk.org, visiting the partnership page on Facebook or following the conference on Twitter. We will spend most of our time at this conference, as we did last year, learning from one another. We have brief plenary sessions with an opportunity to hear from two of our top leaders: Health Plan CEO George Halvorson and Dr. Jack Cochran of the Permanente Federation. Most of the time at the conference is dedicated to workshops, where smaller group discussion and learning are best achieved.

The plenary session on the morning of March 14 will include a delegates-only session where we will finalize plans for National Bargaining. National Bargaining begins on April 6.  Preparations have been under way for many months, and the delegate conference session will be an exciting threshold moment as we begin our third historic National Bargaining for nearly 100,000 unionized KP employees!

Among the reasons we have worked hard to have a huge turnout this year, as we did last year (and which I hope will continue year in and year out), is that we want to have a rich discussion among our leadership about the importance of our work in partnership.

I cannot think of a more important time in the last 35 years for the labor movement to make new contributions to shaping our society. The labor movement has been the primary engine of extending human rights, economic rights, and real hope for people. Today’s world has completely transformed from the world of our parents and grandparents. We live in a society ridden with debt, both national and personal, that is crushing the life out of families and governments’ ability to provide the most basic services to our people.

We have seen the loss of tens of millions of jobs – good-paying jobs that sustained and built the middle class. With those good jobs having been replaced by jobs that pay less than half, most Americans have taken a huge wage cut in this last generation.

Our union density in the private sector is down to 7.2%.

Our work at Kaiser Permanente every day has answers for our brothers and sisters all across the nation:  Strong unions can provide both a great standard of living and working conditions, and can contribute real value to the products we create with our labor. That value contribution is where workers and their unions can sustain power in society. 

We influence quality.

We influence cost of the products to the consumer.

We are organizing the unorganized with minimal conflict.

We bargain our contracts based on interests.

We are leading change for American unions. Let’s spread that change. Let’s have a mighty roar from our assembly next week: American workers and their unions are at the center of the recovery for our nation and the generations to come!

See you there!