Healthcare Workers 16-item
Request of Mayor Davis and Councilmembers Zwick and Brock that the City Council direct the City Manager and City Attorney to study and draft an ordinance that would guarantee healthcare workers a minimum wage in Santa Monica.
Whereas healthcare workers served our city tirelessly and bravely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and whereas healthcare job vacancies are rising as workers on the frontlines deal with the emotional, mental, and physical fallout of providing healthcare during a pandemic and whereas the City of Santa Monica requires a sufficient healthcare workforce to ensure our community remains healthy and safe.
The proposed ordinance should explore providing a minimum wage of not less than $25 an hour to all healthcare workers at all hospitals, clinics, and psychiatric facilities within the city. It should further explore a prohibition against employers funding minimum wage increases via reduced staffing, hours of work, or benefits to current health care employees and mechanisms through which the city would enforce all requirements therein. Finally, it should include a process whereby employers may be granted a waiver from such minimum wage requirements if able to demonstrate by substantial evidence that compliance would raise substantial doubt about the employer’s ability to continue as a going concern under generally accepted accounting standards