For Capital & Main from Los Angeles—Cristina Cortez earns just $20.70 an hour running dialysis procedures for older patients suffering from kidney failure in Gilroy, California, a predominantly Latino community just south of San Jose. Because of her husband’s serious work injury in 2017 and their need to economize, her family of five moved an hour away to Merced County in the Central Valley, where rent is considerably lower. But Cortez, who works 12-hour shifts, said gas prices are high, and her days are long. “We’re living paycheck to paycheck,” Cortez said. “It’s a struggle.”
That’s why Cortez was excited when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in the fall that set her and 400,000 other health care workers across California on a path to earning $25 per hour over the next few years. The minimum wage law, known as Senate Bill 525, was supposed to have begun phasing in on June 1. But the wage law was delayed because of a massive state budget deficit that resulted in painful cuts. Now, Cortez, a certified hemodialysis technician, may have to wait until Jan. 1 at the latest for the wage hike, the California Department of Health Care Services said. That might not seem far away, but finances are already strained for Cortez and thousands of other low-wage health care workers across the state. Many have left the profession in part because of low pay, stressing the state’s health care system.
The delay “really, really impacts me,” said Cortez, 44, who has been applying for part-time jobs at big box retailers in the hopes that the extra money will allow her to move back to her hometown of Gilroy and shed her costly commute, even if it means renting a smaller home. The wage increase will “make a big difference,” she said.
The delay comes as costs of necessities rise. It also means uncertainty. The budget deal hammered out in late June stipulated that the wage increase will kick in as early as mid-October and as late as Jan. 1. For Cortez, every month that goes by represents a loss of extra income that she expected to receive. She anticipated the wage hike to increase her monthly pay by almost $400, she said.
Observers said the delay is rare. “Increases in the state minimum wage have never been paused,” and the delay is “very unusual,” said Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education.
Big-ticket budget items often have mechanisms that provide for delays to be triggered under certain economic conditions, said Scott Graves, budget director of the California Budget & Policy Center, a nonprofit think tank. The new law didn’t include such triggers when the governor signed the bill; they were added later.
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