On Wednesday, thousands of Kaiser Permanente mental health workers across Northern California walked off the job in protest over the hospital chain’s use of artificial intelligence, and honestly, their concerns are pretty legitimate.

About 2,400 therapists, psychologists, social workers, and chemical dependency counselors represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers have been in contract negotiations since last summer. They’ve been operating under an expired contract since September 30th, and tensions are heating up over how AI fits into patient care.

The core issue? Kaiser wants to remove language from the new contract that would protect workers from being replaced by technology. The union is pushing back hard. “Our concern with the use of AI is, we want to be able to use it as a tool, but not to replace some of the functions that we do”, said Natalie Rogers, a psychiatric provider at Kaiser San Rafael’s emergency room.

Here’s the thing that makes this strike particularly urgent: Kaiser already doesn’t have enough mental health providers to handle current patient demand. Adding AI into the mix without proper safeguards could make an already stretched system even worse. The union has flagged concerns about AI being used in patient phone and text communications, the triage process, and even replacing human note-takers and scribes.

Emma Olsen, a Kaiser therapist, pointed out that the hospital has faced multiple fines and punishments for mental health violations. “Kaiser has been punished and fined so many times for mental health violations, we can’t let it get away with further lowering patient care standards”, she said. “Our patients need human therapists”.

Workers are also fighting to keep a provision from their last contract (secured after a brutal 10-week strike in 2022) that gives them seven hours per week to handle essential non-clinical work like responding to patient calls and emails. Rogers explained that without this protection, therapists were forced to work evenings and nights unpaid to finish paperwork. “We love our patients but we don’t want to work for free”.

Kaiser, unsurprisingly, sees things differently. The hospital says the union is spreading “false narratives” and insists that AI is meant to support clinicians, not replace them. In a statement, Kaiser claimed that AI “does not replace human assessment, and it does not make care decisions”.

But the union isn’t buying it. They want guarantees that clerical workers and telephone operators, potentially working alongside AI, won’t be screening and triaging patients who desperately need mental health support.

The strike affected hospitals and clinics throughout Northern California, with the California Nurses Association staging a sympathy strike in solidarity. Though the two sides met for bargaining last week with more sessions scheduled for later in March, a union spokesperson said they’re “still very far from an agreement”.

This fight matters because it’s about whether corporations can use technology to cut corners on something as critical as mental health care.