Healthcare workers rally for higher pay, more staffing under Senate Bill 525

Hospital janitors, medical assistants, resident physicians and nursing home caregivers rallied Thursday, May 11 in Pasadena to urge passage of a bill that would boost staffing for California healthcare workers and raise their minimum wage to $25 an hour.

Senate Bill 525, introduced by Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Echo Park, would replace California’s current base pay of $15.50 for employees in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, dialysis clinics, behavioral health centers and scores of other facilities.

The workers, most of whom are non-union, say they’re burned out and traumatized from the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and chronic understaffing. Those factors, they say, have caused workers to leave their profession “in alarming numbers.”

To read the full report from the Pasadena Star-News, click here.