HEALTH CARE

Newsom signs bill raising minimum wage for California health care workers to $25

BY LAUREN IRWIN - 10/14/23 8:58 AM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4255908-newsom-signs-bill-raising-minimum-wage-california-health-care-workers

The bill is set to raise wages for 455,000 employees, a report by the University of California Berkeley Labor Center found. Three out of four of the employees who would see a wage increase are women and 76 percent of the employees eligible for the increase are people of color.

Employees that “provide services directly or indirectly support patient care” will see wage increases. Medical assistance, certified nursing assistants, aides, technicians, maintenance workers, janitorial or housekeeping staff, groundskeepers, security officers and food service workers all will benefit from the bill, SEIU California said.

The decision by Newsom comes as more than 75,000 health care workers for hospital chain Kaiser Permanente went on strike across the country. The group said they are striking due to understaffing.

In a statement to The Hill, one nurse at the Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center said the company is “bargaining in bad faith over the solutions we need to end the Kaiser short-staffing crisis.”