A lot of

California health care workers, from nursing assistants and medical programmers to cleaners and security guards, will see at least $25 an hour starting in 2026 after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill

on Friday

that mandates a minimum wage across the sector.

The country’s first legislation was backed by unions who said higher pay is needed to combat the state’s health worker shortage

and improve patient care

indicating burnout exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Today, California is ending the depletion of our healthcare workforce by ensuring healthcare workers can do the work they love and pay their bills, a huge win for workers and patients seeking care,” said Tia Orr, Executive Director from SEIU California. in a written statement praising “the courage and commitment” of healthcare workers during the pandemic.

Under the new law, workers at large healthcare facilities will earn $23 an hour starting next year, $24 an hour in 2025 and $25 an hour in 2026. That applies to all staff, including money launderers and workers in hospital gift shops.

However, workers at independent rural hospitals and facilities that serve high numbers of Medicare and Medi-Cal patients will see $18 per hour next year, not reaching $25 per hour until 2033.

Other smaller workplaces, including urgent care clinics and skilled nursing facilities, must pay workers $21 per hour next year, increasing to $25 per hour by 2028.

Newsom, whose decisions on labor laws are under scrutiny during statewide worker strikes, considered signing the bill for weeks and signed it just one day before the deadline for approving the legislation that lawmakers gave him last month sent. The law was signed after thousands of Kaiser Permanente employees quit their jobs last week

one of the largest healthcare worker strikes in American history. They reached a preliminary contract agreement on Friday.

So Newsom

recently approved a pay increase for fast food workers at major chains to $20 an hour. The standard minimum wage in California is $15.50 per hour.

But the liberal governor

which also approved more paid sick leave for all employees

has been criticized by other recent vetoes of labor rights legislation, including a bill that would have given

striking unemployment benefits for workers

and a bill to grant

OSHA protections for domestic workers.

Minimum wage legislation in healthcare

by a longtime labor advocate

State Senator Maria Elena Durazo

(D-Los Angeles)

was the result of a hard-fought agreement among lawmakers, unions and lobbyists representing hospital administrators, nurses and dialysis clinics.

The bill struggled during the legislative session as even union-friendly Democrats worried that rural community hospitals already in bankruptcy would collapse under massive wage increases or pass the costs on to patients.

Negotiations to address these concerns and gain greater support for the bill have significantly staggered the implementation of the minimum wage. Last-minute changes to the bill prevent cities and counties from raising wages locally for the next decade; ban efforts to cap hospital executives’ salaries, and suspend costly, recurring ballot measures related to the operation of kidney dialysis clinics.

Groups like the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Hospital Assn. removed their opposition to the bill after changes made during the last week of the legislative session. Early estimates of the legislation’s costs put it at billions for health care companies and at least $973 million a year for the state. But that was before the legislation was reduced to a years-long phase-in plan. The overall budget impact for the state facing a billion-dollar budget deficit has yet to be confirmed but is expected to be significantly smaller due to the changes made to the bill.