Margolin Group President and CEO, Leslie Margolin, who served from 1999 – 2006 as the founding co-chair of the Kaiser Permanente-AFL-CIO Labor Management Partnership (LMP), was thrilled to learn of President Barack Obama’s recent public tribute to Kaiser Permanente and, by extension, its AFL-CIO partners.
Citing Kaiser Permanente as “one of the premier health organizations in the country,” the President commended Kaiser for “taking the high road” and enlisting its employees “as partners in their shared future.”
President Obama’s recognition builds on that of former Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman who, in a year 2000 Labor Department Proclamation, thanked Margolin, her AFL-CIO partner, Peter diCicco and the roughly 800 bargaining team members across the nation who participated in and led the initial round of national negotiations, referring to their partnership as an “an unprecedented bargaining process that broke new ground in labor relations and established a model for healthcare in America.”
Five years following Secretary Herman’s proclamation, MIT and Harvard scholars described Margolin and diCicco’s work on the LMP as “the largest, most innovative, most successful experiment with interest-based negotiations…[in the history of] U.S. labor management relations”. In fact, MIT scholars Tom Kochan and Bob McKersie and the late Susan Eaton of Harvard University’s School of Government predicted that the LMP is “likely to be recorded by future historians as one of the most significant breakthrough negotiations in U.S. labor relations of our time.”
As we at The Margolin Group look back on the 18 years of breakthrough work undertaken by Kaiser Permanente and its Partnership Unions, we are proud to have been such an important part of that rich history, and we congratulate all of the brave men and women at Kaiser Permanente, and in its AFL-CIO partnering unions, who have worked relentlessly to forge and maintain trusting, performance-based relationships that have contributed to the creation of a model of care that others around the world continue to try to emulate. As Secretary Herman noted back in 2000, you have served America well. Congratulations, and thank you.
Click Here for President Obama’s Comments
For More About Kaiser’s Labor Management Partnership Click Here