Voters to decide increases- CalMatters

California’s largest well being care employees union isn’t any stranger to taking its fights to the poll — each statewide and regionally. Previously 5 years, it has pitched to voters initiatives on points starting from staffing at dialysis clinics to price caps for particular well being care suppliers.

This election season, Service Workers Worldwide Union-United Well being Staff West is concentrating on the cities of Duarte and Inglewood, the place on Nov. 8 voters will determine whether or not to set a   minimal wage requirement of $25 per hour for a number of the lowest paid employees at non-public hospitals, built-in well being methods and dialysis clinics. These employees embrace affected person care technicians, janitorial workers, meals service employees and aides, amongst others. 

Union leaders are betting that native wins this November might spur a bigger statewide motion. Given California’s shortage of health care workers, supporters say a pay bump could assist; opponents say these proposals are too slim to make a distinction and should as a substitute backfire.  

“We need to win a minimal wage throughout the state (so) we’re beginning off by concentrating on the place we’re listening to probably the most help and probably the most want,” stated Renée Saldaña, a spokesperson for SEIU-UHW. 

The union tried negotiating a statewide minimal wage with hospital leaders this summer season, however that deal fell aside. And prior to now, the union has pushed to lift the state’s common minimal wage, similar to when it authored a $15 minimal wage measure for the statewide poll. The union withdrew its measure when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a similar proposal into law. 

Residents in a handful of different Southern California cities could must decide on well being care employee wages in later elections. For instance, metropolis councils in Los Angeles, Lengthy Seaside and Downey approved minimum wage hikes for well being care employees at non-public amenities this summer season. However an industry-backed marketing campaign quickly blocked the cities from implementing the ordinances after it collected enough signatures for a referendum. These metropolis councils both should repeal the ordinance or put the difficulty as much as voters, seemingly in 2024.

The coalition of hospitals and clinics main the opposition to the wage initiatives is looking the union’s proposals “deeply flawed” and the pay price “arbitrary.” The hospital foyer and well being methods throughout the state have poured not less than $17 million into campaigns to defeat these two measures, based on marketing campaign filings in Inglewood and Duarte. SEIU-UHW has allotted just below $500,000 in help.  

The opposition marketing campaign’s argument to voters is that the measures are dangerous coverage as a result of they exclude a big quantity of well being care employees in these cities. The measure applies solely to non-public hospitals, their affiliated amenities and dialysis clinics, that means employees employed at public hospitals could be excluded. Staff at nursing houses, non-public or public, are additionally not included within the measure.

Duarte’s Measure J would primarily apply to folks employed by Metropolis of Hope, a personal nonprofit hospital and most cancers analysis heart. In Inglewood, Measure HC would apply to employees at various dialysis clinics and Centinela Hospital Medical Heart, a 362-bed facility operated by the for-profit system Prime Healthcare. 

If accredited, the $25 minimal wage price might go into impact as early as December. Employers would then must observe up with price of residing will increase beginning in 2024. The initiatives prohibit employers from funding the minimal wage hike by laying folks off or lowering their advantages. 

George Greene, president of the Hospital Affiliation of Southern California, warned these measures might financially pressure hospitals and result in cuts in providers, hurting sufferers. Greene argued that by requiring solely sure non-public amenities to lift their minimal wage, well being care employees within the space might gravitate towards positions there, exacerbating worker shortages at neighboring, public amenities, which largely serve low-income sufferers. 

“Completely, the hospital {industry} believes that our workforce ought to obtain truthful pay. We consider that this must be a statewide dialog so that each one well being care suppliers may be considered and we are able to have a measured strategy as to how we decide what these charges of pay must be,” Greene stated. 

SEIU-UHW can also be behind this 12 months’s Proposition 29, a measure that asks voters statewide — for a 3rd time — to determine on establishing new rules for dialysis clinics, together with including an additional medical supplier on web site. The union is known to routinely turn to voters and use the initiative course of as a negotiating tactic. Previously, the union has proposed poll measures after which pulled them after reaching agreements with hospital leaders.

In August, the union and the California Hospital Affiliation tried to hash out a last-minute legislative deal that might enhance the minimal wage for employees in each private and non-private amenities statewide (starting from $19 to $24 an hour, relying on location) in alternate for the union’s help for a request to delay seismic upgrades due in 2030. However these negotiations fizzled. 

“These are each large, vital points that should be addressed, however with the top of the legislative session solely every week away, we simply merely ran out of time this 12 months,” Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokesperson for the hospital affiliation, stated on the time. 

In absence of a statewide wage deal, the union is concentrating on its effort the place it thinks it may safe help, beginning with metropolis councils. Saldaña stated cities don’t have the ability to implement wage raises at county, state or federally run well being amenities, which is why the union has centered its efforts on non-public methods. The union’s plan is to ultimately develop these efforts to all different well being care employees, she stated. 

Saldaña additionally defined that the union arrived on the $25-per-hour price as a result of that might place these employees at annual earnings of just about $50,000, which the union considers the baseline revenue to reside in high-cost areas like Los Angeles.

For Mauricio Medina, a wage enhance might imply a chance to lastly have the time to take the programs he must turn into a registered nurse — a longtime objective of his. Medina, a union member, works as a unit secretary at Southern California Hospital at Hollywood. A lot of his work is administrative: admitting and discharging sufferers, taking calls, and organizing info for medical workers. In every week, he normally works three 12-hour shifts at this location. He typically picks up additional shifts as an on-call licensed nursing assistant at different hospitals, together with Metropolis of Hope in Duarte and Centinela Hospital Medical Heart in Inglewood. 

“It’s laborious as a result of typically you don’t get to see your loved ones. You come dwelling at 9:30 pm, you eat dinner, sleep, get up and do it another time,” he stated. 

Medina has spent 22 years within the discipline, the final six years in his present place. He stated he began his present job at $16.25 and thru the union’s contract negotiations is now incomes $21 an hour. Nonetheless, as the only supplier for his household, that is typically not sufficient. 

In the previous couple of years, he has seen various coworkers go away for jobs in different sectors with extra aggressive wages, leaving his office much more shorthanded. He understands why they go away — the pandemic burnout together with low pay “brings down my feeling of wanting to remain within the {industry},” Medina stated. “And I do know at any given time, they’re fast to interchange me with one other physique.”

A national survey of health care workers carried out in September of 2021 discovered that 18% of well being care employees had stop for the reason that begin of the pandemic and 12% had been laid off. Of those that stayed, 31% had contemplated leaving.  

Joanne Spetz, professor and director on the Institute for Well being Coverage Research on the College of California, San Francisco, stated a residing wage is vital to retaining and attracting well being care employees, but it surely’s unclear what the affect of the union’s city-by-city technique may very well be. 

She defined {that a} pay bump in non-public amenities might power public amenities to do the identical to stay aggressive. However labor economics means that in flip, hospitals and clinics will take a look at the place they will make cuts or for tactics to recoup prices, Spetz stated. 

“Well being care organizations are usually fairly good at determining how one can cross on the prices to insurance coverage corporations,” she stated, “which implies cross on the prices to you and me.”