This California health care worker’s pay jumped by 11.7%. What’s behind the big wage hike
Front-line health care workers around California will receive pay raises starting this week as a 2023 state law is implemented for the first time ever requiring industry-specific minimum wages.
Abby Leal, a certified nursing assistant at Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, will see the biggest wage increase she’s ever gotten from her employer as a result of the passage of California Senate Bill 525, the health care minimum wage law. Her pay will increase by 11.7% to $23 from $20.60.
“It was all the health care workers,” Leal said. “We’re unionized, and we definitely came together and fought for this. I’m so happy we won, especially now that it’s about to be the holidays. We all know how expensive that can be.”
Leal’s union, the Services Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, fought for several years to move employers toward paying a $25 minimum wage. By the time Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 525 into law in 2023, SEIU-UHW and many other unions had signed labor contracts with large health systems that spelled out the path to $25 an hour.
However, Leal and many other front-line workers are still waiting. Implementation of the law was delayed twice, but SEIU-UHW sent out a news release to assure members that the law would go into effect starting Wednesday.
“This victory belongs to the workers who spoke passionately about the grueling work and the impact on patients when workers cover two or three jobs, whether on short-staffed nursing home floors, in hospital operating rooms, or at the front desks and phone lines of community clinics,” said state Sen. María Elena Durazo in a written statement. The Long Beach Democrat authored the measure.
The law touches virtually every type of health care business in California and any employee who performs patient care, supports someone who does or is a member of a health care team. These workers include certified nursing assistants, food service workers, housekeepers, medical coders and billers, patient aides, schedulers, technicians, laundry workers and even contract workers.
In a February 2024 report, researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center estimated that the wage increase would affect 322,000 workers who are earning below the minimum and 76,000 workers earning at or slightly more than the minimum whose employers will raise their wages to maintain their pay premiums.
In a previous report, the Labor Center researchers reported that three-quarters of the workers who would receive the wage hikes are women and people of color.
Health care workers will see wages jump to $18-$23 an hour
The law incrementally raises the minimum wage to $25 for most health care employers, but some have much longer to get there than others. Some employers are exempt, including hospitals controlled by the California Department of State Hospitals and certain tribal health centers. Other employers may have received a waiver to delay the increase, but they must alert affected workers about this.
Integrated health care delivery systems with 10,000-plus full-time equivalent employees must increase the minimum wage in stages starting at $23 per hour this month and stepping up to $24 on July 1, 2025, and $25 by July 1, 2026. This raise schedule also applies to workers at dialysis clinics. After 2026, the minimum wage at these businesses will increase by the lesser of 3.5% or by the rate of inflation, as determined by the Consumer Price Index.
Leal’s employer falls into the category of large health care delivery systems because it’s owned by Tenet Healthcare, a for-profit health system with $20.5 billion in operating revenue in 2023.
Tenet completed the acquisition of the 209-bed Emanuel Medical Center in 2014, and it also owns Doctors Medical Center of Modesto and Doctors Hospital of Manteca.
While Leal gets a boost to a $23 minimum wage, health care workers at other types of businesses will see their minimum pay rise to $18 or $21 this week. Many county-run health facilities have until January 2025 to implement the wage increases.
An accompanying chart from the California Department of Industrial Relations offers a detailed look at the full minimum wage schedules for different types of health facilities.
Health care worker views wage hike as show of appreciation
The 28-year-old Leal said she sees the wage increases as a show of appreciation for front-line employees who worked in some pretty scary conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. She started her job at Emanuel Medical Center less than a year before Newsom issued stay-home orders to Californians in an attempt to curb deaths from the virus. When hired, she said, she was earning about $19 an hour.
Because of a shortage of personal protective equipment during the pandemic, Leal said, she had to store and re-wear the same N95 mask for a week or two at a time. She would have to sanitize the hazardous materials suit she wore because someone on the next shift would re-use it, and they, in turn, did the same for her. If a patient suffered a cardiac arrest, she said, she performed CPR with all her equipment on, “trying not to faint because it was so hot.”
Despite the challenges, Leal said, she loves her work and feels a deep responsibility for patients she meets when they are at their most vulnerable.
“I am bathing them,” she said. “I am walking them, feeding them. Even if it’s a simple walk to the bathroom or around the unit, I have to accompany some of them.”
Charles Williams trains certified nursing assistants at Prevail Academy in Sacramento and administers the state exam to CNA candidates at sites all around the Central Valley. Wages, he said, play a huge role in determining where licensed nursing assistants choose to work.
He regularly meets certified nursing assistants who have relocated to Sacramento from Fresno or other points south to find higher wages. Others, he said, have gone to work for temporary staffing agencies where they are paid $40 or more an hour. One holiday weekend, he said, he witnessed a CNA get an offer of $61 an hour to work at a facility.
What’s best for patient care, though, Williams said, is that health care facilities have staff familiar with their practices and routines. If wages increase, he said, that means there’s more incentive for these front-line workers to commit to one workplace.
