The labor-management partnership of health care giant Kaiser-Permanente and its unions has reached the largest private-sector contract agreement of the year, covering 82,000 employees nationwide and providing significant increases in wages and benefits.

Kaiser-Permanente Senior vice president Leslie Margolin:

[Margolin] "This agreement is good for Kaiser-Permanente workers, it's good for our patients and our members, it's good for our purchaser groups, and it's good for the communities that we serve."

The agreement is receiving overwhelming support from union members voting this week, and the contract is expected to take effect Saturday. Peter deCicco, Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, says the labor-management partnership at Kaiser-Permanente is a huge improvement over the cost-cutting seen in most labor struggles:

[deCicco] "Care was cut...cutting wages and benefits...institutionalizing understaffing and poor working conditions in a race to the bottom. In 1996, our unions proposed that we create a new operating model, and force the competition to race us to the top of affordable quality care. So our unions and labor management partnership strategy are helping create the future for the kind of non-profit, high-quality affordable quality health care that our nation so badly needs. At the same time we are creating a new model for the future of the labour movement."