New minimum wage takes effect for California health care workers

Hundreds of thousands of California health care workers will see a significant bump in their pay this week as a new minimum wage goes into effect.

More than 325,000 workers at health care facilities will see their hourly pay increase. Those working at rural and independent facilities will get a raise to $18 an hour while others at hospitals with at least 10,000 employees will be bumped to $23 an hour.

Another 75,000 workers already making that kind of money also will see raises.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new law, SB525, last year, with the pay bump originally slated for June, but it was pushed back to help close a state budget shortfall.

Professor John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, estimates the new minimum wage will amount to an extra $5,000 to $6,000 a year, which he acknowledges is still not a lot of money here in the Bay Area.

"But it’s an indication of the depth of the problem, that the wages for some health care workers were so low in these very expensive parts of the state, where especially accommodation costs have been skyrocketing, that something needed to be done to try to address this issue moving forward or else we’d face extremely severe shortages and retention for patient care, which is not good if people are constantly quitting their jobs," Logan said.

Logan says Los Angeles and Long Beach already passed a minimum wage for health care workers, and he hasn’t seen any evidence of layoffs. He suspects states such as Washington, New York and Minnesota might also enact a minimum wage for health care workers.