City Hall is pursuing a new minimum wage effort targeting local healthcare workers.
In Tuesday’s meeting by request of Mayor Gleam Davis and both Councilmembers Phil Brock and Jesse Zwick, City Council passed a motion directing the City Manager and City Attorney to study and draft an ordinance that would guarantee healthcare workers minimum wage of not less than $25 an hour at all hospitals, clinics and psychiatric facilities within the city
While the motion passed, councilmembers had questions over its scope, including who would benefit and what the impact on different kinds of healthcare businesses would be.
"Does that also include the person working in the cafeteria, the person working in the gift shop, because when we say health care workers, I’m thinking of the people who are working with patients, maybe cleaning up the rooms, prepping rooms, dealing with patients directly, indirectly," Mayor Pro Tem Lana Negrete asked.
Negrete also wanted to know if the proposal would scale for different jobs.
"Is it tiered? Or is this just a minimum wage that’s the same for the person who’s taking someone’s blood pressure and the person who’s working in the gift shop? Is that base minimum the same?" Asked Negrete.
The proposal’s backers said they intended it to apply to individuals who were providing medical care but said more details would be available after staff had studied the issue.
"They’ll take into account the question about who it covers within the healthcare industry and then they will bring back a proposed ordinance," Davis clarified.
Councilman Oscar de la Torre said he acknowledged the rising cost of inflation and its impact on workers but he wanted additional clarification on the impact a minimum wage would have on non-profit healthcare providers.
Councilman Brock said he also wanted some details on different impacts on hospitals, clinics or at-home care providers.
"The Venice Family Clinic is the largest free health clinic in the country so I want to see what impact that would have on an operation like the Venice Family Clinic and also looking at the economic impact, in general, on every other, on our local hospitals as well," he said.
Davis also said that this issue was being discussed at a state level and other jurisdictions have already adopted the $25 per hour minimum wage for healthcare workers and that this would be taken into account by City staff.
"So what we do may become irrelevant because the state may supersede us anyway," Brock said adding, "I do want to make sure those people who are working with patients cleaning up blood, cleaning up debris every day, that they feel valued and that combined knowledge lets them keep working and wanting stay at their job. I don’t think its wise for a hospital to have to retain people every three months. … I hope we vote for this."
However, last year the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West spent approximately $11 million to promote local $25 minimum wage measures in 10 Southern California cities while hospitals and health care facilities spent $12 million to fight against them.
According to the Los Angeles Times, that fight yielded an opposite decision in November in two cities where the measure made the ballot: Inglewood voters approved raises at private hospitals and dialysis clinics, while voters in Duarte rejected the wage hike.
The motion was moved by Negrete, seconded by Brock and passed unanimously. Councilmember Christine Parra was not in attendance. A date was not yet set to receive the report by the City.
