By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia
California has increased wages for some of the lowest-paid healthcare workers in the state.
According to the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, the new minimum-wage increase to $25 an hour over the next decade will affect approximately 460,00 workers in the health care industry. Under the new law, which took effect Oct. 16, professionals working at rural independent healthcare facilities will earn a minimum of $18 an hour immediately. Hospitals with at least 10,000 employees will now have a minimum wage floor of at least $23 an hour.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law last year, and the wage increase was supposed to take effect on June 1, 2024. However, the state budget deficit of nearly $46 billion at the time caused a delay in implementing the pay increase for some months.
John Logan, professor of Labor and Employment at San Francisco State University, said that the wage increase will help the health care industry retain and recruit workers in an interview with ABC News.
“It’s a way of providing something approaching a living wage for hundreds of thousands of workers that didn’t have it before,” said Logan.
The minimum wage for most workers in California is $16 and voters will decide in November to increase the rate to $18 an hour by 2026. Increasing the wage would make the rate the highest statewide minimum wage in the country.
