ALERT: 6/1/24 Compliance Deadline: health care worker minimum wages

Those of you in the medical field have probably already heard of California’s new Health Care Worker Minimum Wage law (SB-525). This bill increases the minimum wage for nearly all California health care workers, and was covered in Holden Law Group’s most recent New Laws Newsletter. Our office is receiving a lot of calls about this new law as we enter the final stretch before mandatory minimum wage increases go into effect on June 1, 2024.

This law is complex, and a lot of misinformation is out there surrounding who is and isn’t subject to the wage increases (spoiler alert – you probably are!) The bill was intended to cast a wide net and contains various definitions of covered health care facilities and employees. If your company meets any potential definition of a covered facility, you must begin paying the mandatory minimum wage increases on June 1, 2024. Analyzing which increase your company is subject to is complicated – there are multiple minimum wage tiers and the category you fall into depends on many factors, including your size, location, services, contracts with other medical facilities, government payor percentages, etc.

If you are unclear about how SB-525 impacts your company and what wage tier, if any, it falls under, reach out to schedule a call with our resident SB-525 expert. Holden Law Group is carving out time each week throughout the month of May to ensure our health care clients have a resource to gather information and ensure timely compliance with this new law.