Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed a closely watched bill Friday that raises the minimum wage for California health care workers to $25 per hour.
Proponents of the bill, Senate Bill 525, said the bill will raise wages for health care employees facing staffing shortages that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California celebrated Newsom’s decision, which was uncertain until he signed the bill Friday night.
“Californians saw the courage and commitment of healthcare workers during the pandemic, and now that same fearlessness and commitment to patients is responsible for a historic investment in the workers who make our healthcare system strong and accessible for all,” Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California said in a statement.
Since the start of 2022, the state has set requirements that requires all industries to increase minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bill Newsom signed Friday will establish five separate wage increases, depending on the nature of the employer.
State Sen. María Elena Durazo, who introduced the bill in the state senate, thanked Newsom for signing the “historic investment in our healthcare workforce” in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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.”