A category of healthcare facility help employees, together with nursing assistants, safety guards, and janitors, has labored alongside medical doctors and nurses all through the COVID-19 pandemic conserving sufferers and medical buildings secure and clear. It’s an unassuming line of labor that some folks contemplate a calling.
Tony Ramirez, 39, a vital care technician at Garfield Medical Heart in Monterey Park, California, finds extra achievement in serving to folks in want than he as soon as did enhancing technical paperwork for Disneyland. Earlier than the pandemic, he would reposition and bathe sufferers and generally monitor their very important indicators. After COVID struck, he took on extra duties, offering CPR or grabbing drugs throughout an emergency, putting results in monitor coronary heart rhythms, and conducting autopsy work. “We began doing that,” Ramirez mentioned, “due to the inflow of COVID sufferers working very sick and in very intense conditions.”
By means of all of it, his $19.40-an-hour pay hasn’t modified.
In Southern California, one labor union is making an attempt to assist by pushing for a $25 minimal wage at personal hospitals, psychiatric amenities, and dialysis clinics. The Service Workers Worldwide Union-United Healthcare Staff West, which represents roughly 100,000 healthcare staff in California, says a increase would assist the suppliers retain staff who may land comparable positions at Amazon or fast-food eating places amid labor shortages. It could additionally permit Ramirez to surrender one of many three jobs he works simply to make hire.
What started as a 10-city marketing campaign by the union has been winnowed to November poll measures in simply two cities in Los Angeles County, reflecting costly political jockeying between labor and trade. And the $25 minimal wage isn’t the one marketing campaign being waged by SEIU-UHW this cycle — the union can also be making an attempt for the third time to get dialysis trade reforms handed.
A poll situation committee referred to as the California Affiliation of Hospitals and Well being Methods — with funding from Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Adventist Well being, Cedars-Sinai, Dignity Well being, and different hospitals and well being methods — opposes a $25 minimal wage as a result of it raises prices for personal, however not public, hospitals and healthcare amenities. Opponents have latched on to this disparity by calling it the “unequal pay measure.” An evaluation commissioned by the California Hospital Affiliation estimated that the change would increase prices for personal amenities by $392 million a yr, a 6.9% enhance, throughout the ten cities.
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“Nobody in hospitals and nobody in healthcare is against a residing wage,” mentioned George Greene, president and CEO of the Hospital Affiliation of Southern California. “However we consider that this ought to be a statewide dialog that’s measured and considerate.”
Earlier this yr, metropolis councils in Los Angeles, Downey, Monterey Park, and Lengthy Seashore adopted comparable $25 minimal wage ordinances for well being staff, however they have been challenged by hospitals and well being amenities, which pushed the problem to the poll in 2024. In the meantime, the union dropped its effort in Anaheim and failed to assemble sufficient signatures in Culver Metropolis, Lynwood, or Baldwin Park to get a minimal wage measure on the autumn poll. Because of this, solely voters in Inglewood and Duarte will solid their votes — on Measure HC and Measure J, respectively — this November.
Spending on the struggle over the minimal wage proposals in Southern California has reached almost $22 million. In line with state marketing campaign finance filings, SEIU-UHW has spent almost $11 million throughout all 10 cities. Hospitals and well being amenities have additionally spent virtually $11 million to defeat minimal wage proposals.
Unions have lengthy agitated for across-the-board minimal wage will increase. In 2016, labor performed a key position in efficiently lobbying then-Gov. Jerry Brown to make California the primary state to set a $15 minimal wage, a graduated measure that as of this yr applies to all employers with 26 or extra staff. About 40 native governments set their very own minimal wages above the state minimal. The federal minimal wage stays $7.25.
SEIU-UHW contemplated a statewide scope, in addition to the present piecemeal technique of focusing on cities in and round Los Angeles. “At first we have been metropolis by metropolis,” mentioned the union’s political director, Suzanne Jimenez. “After which a dialog round doing it statewide got here up however in the end didn’t transfer ahead.”
That’s partly as a result of a deal to set a statewide minimal wage at private and non-private hospitals fell aside on the finish of the final legislative session, and wins like which might be tougher to tug off than they as soon as have been, mentioned Invoice Sokol, a labor lawyer who has labored with SEIU-UHW.
“It’s not about what we want we may do, however about the place can we win,” Sokol mentioned. “The reply is in a single metropolis at a time.”
Union leaders mentioned they focused cities the place inside polling confirmed help amongst residents. Jimenez mentioned the proposal has majority help in Inglewood however Duarte is simply too small to pattern. The measures want a majority vote in every metropolis to go, and if that occurs, they may take impact 30 days after the outcomes are licensed.
Ought to the method show profitable in Los Angeles County, the union will contemplate taking the proposal to different elements of the state, together with the Inland Empire and Sacramento, Jimenez mentioned. That would finally construct momentum for statewide change.
If voters in Inglewood and Duarte go the $25 minimal wage, the impact can be restricted. Staff at state- and county-run medical amenities aren’t coated by metropolis ordinances, so the native measures wouldn’t apply. Which means it excludes staff who do the identical jobs at public hospitals, clinics, and healthcare amenities.
In Inglewood, the measure would apply solely to Centinela Hospital Medical Heart and a number of other for-profit dialysis clinics. In Duarte, it might apply to Metropolis of Hope, a personal most cancers hospital.
Many labor economists agree that one thing should enhance for this workforce: They want larger wages and higher work situations. However that comes at a price to the well being system, mentioned Joanne Spetz, director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Well being Coverage Research on the College of California-San Francisco.
“Ultimately, who finally ends up paying for that? Customers do,” Spetz mentioned. “Perhaps you’ll reduce into the revenue margins of a publicly traded firm a bit bit, however the actuality is these firms have been fairly good at determining the way to preserve their revenues and profitability up.”
Nonetheless, the union says a $25 minimal wage would assist members of the lowest-paid sector of the healthcare workforce, who’re disproportionately girls, immigrants, and other people of coloration.
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Andrew Kelly, assistant professor of public well being at Cal State East Bay, mentioned elevating wages at one facility may have a cascade impact as a result of surrounding amenities would then want to boost wages to compete.
Presently, a residing wage in L.A. County for a single grownup with no kids is $21.89 hourly, or a bit greater than $45,500 a yr, in accordance with a software from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how. Occupations like “healthcare help” typically pay round $33,000 yearly within the county, in accordance with the identical software.
Come Election Day, most Southern California well being staff should watch from the sideline.
In Monterey Park, the place Ramirez works, the town council authorized the $25 minimal wage, however opponents obtained the vote invalidated by arguing that the council lacked a quorum on the time. The council ended up putting the query on the poll in 2024, two years from now. Ramirez mentioned that new hires at his medical heart begin at $15.30 an hour doing the dirtiest jobs within the hospital and that 5 staff have left his division this yr.
“It’s disheartening, I’m not going to lie,” Ramirez mentioned. “These elected officers know what’s happening.”
Kaiser Well being Information is a nationwide well being coverage information service. It’s an editorially unbiased program of the Henry J. Kaiser Household Basis which isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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