California overrides Culver City’s rejection of the healthcare worker minimum wage

“When the state of CA passed the minimum wage it wasn’t just about helping us, it was about helping the patients and helping the community. It was awesome. It was redemption.”
LaRhonda Smith, Speech Pathologist, SoCal Hospital at Culver City, 10 years.

Oct 12, 2024 is the one year anniversary of the passage of a $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers in California. While this is a cause for celebration for many reasons, in Culver City it also represents righting a wrong done to essential workers in our community.

Just 10 months earlier, in a 3-2 vote, Culver City Council conservatives rejected the very same healthcare worker minimum wage, despite it being approved by neighboring cities, including Los Angeles in a 10-0 vote.

Spectrum News covered the Culver City vote that rejected the healthcare worker minimum wage:

Recognizing Healthcare Heroes during the pandemic

At the height of the pandemic, around the world, in a moment of deep gratitude, people found creative ways to recognize the tremendous contribution of healthcare workers. From people in Spain, India, and China who banged pots and pans nightly out their windows, to the US Navy Blue Angels who performed over Johns Hopkins Hospital, we showed our appreciation. In Culver City, lawn signs appeared honoring essential service workers, including our healthcare workers. The term “Healthcare Hero” was born.

For healthcare workers, the challenges faced from the global pandemic were obvious and understandable. Lives lost while treating patients, mental and physical stress of delivering care day after day, the anxiety of returning home from work and spreading the disease to family members. Our system has yet to recover from these stresses and nationally, we have yet to implement the improvements required to be prepared for the next pathogen to emerge and threaten to upend our lives.

On Dec 12, 2022, two years into the pandemic, the Culver City Council debated an ordinance to establish a $25 an hour minimum wage for healthcare workers in our cIty. In a dramatic meeting, after the outgoing council members approved the ordinance, the newly seated conservative Council majority reopened the debate, reversed the earlier decision and stripped the new minimum wage from healthcare workers. Thus began a new era where a Council voting block consisting of Albert Vera, Göran Eriksson, and Dan O’Brien would undermine numerous initiatives passed by previous Councils on housing, transportation and services for the unhoused.

Why increase wages for healthcare workers?

Ensuring a basic wage for healthcare workers is not just in the best interest of workers, it's in our own self interest as a community. The current labor pool is notoriously limited for service sector workers and higher wages in food service and retail reflect that, now surpassing wages for some nursing staff in local hospitals. At the same time, demand for healthcare services has been increasing steadily as Boomers and Gen X become a greater share of the population and healthcare consumers. Adequate staffing levels in the hospital industry are precarious in good times and non-competitive wages only adds to the challenge.

The industry is not going to solve this problem on its own without legislation. Healthcare has become a commercial enterprise and maximizing profit is at the center of every business decision, especially on staffing. There are bright spots; the industry is focussed on raising wages in competitive technical jobs that already pay significantly more than $25 in attempts to lure away workers from competitors. But for workers at the lower end of the wage range, there are no similar efforts, and staffing shortages have resulted. Instead of raising wages to bring more workers back into healthcare, employers take a different approach. Using the excuse, “we just can’t find anyone”, employers overload current staff with all the work needed to keep a hospital running 24-7.

Being an essential worker means your workplace can not operate without you. It's hard to imagine a hospital functioning properly without a full team of nursing assistants, housekeepers, food service or lab techs. It's certainly not one you would want to visit if you came down with H1N1 Bird Flu and needed urgent medical help. The decision to fill vacancies is a private employer issue, but the consequence of understaffing is a public one.

Recognition for life-saving service and a commitment to a stronger healthcare system are reasons enough for supporting a healthcare minimum wage. Breaking from traditions of devaluing services for caregivers at home and in the workforce and underpaying women and people of color are additional reasons. Fortunately we live in a state that is committed to valuing healthcare workers and a minimum wage. But we can do better in Culver City. We can recognize that public health is public safety and that a city that spends more than half of its General Fund budget on police and fire should step up for all heroes, especially our Healthcare Heroes.

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