California hospitals want to weaken earthquake protection

Sacramento –

California hospitals have long sought to weaken legally required — and expensive — seismic upgrades aimed at ensuring that their doors remain open for patients after a major earthquake.

Now, hospitals have a new and unexpected ally – an influential consortium that supports softened seismic standards in a deal that gives employees a bump in pay.

The last-minute coalition angered other unions, who accused Service Employees International – Western Healthcare Workers’ Federation of striking a secret deal that bypassed the legislative process and put patients, health care workers and communities at risk. It remains unclear whether the lawmaker will draft a bill containing the proposal, which was pushed through in the final days of the legislative session that ends on August 31.

The California Hospital Authority, which advocates for hospitals, did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment.

SEIU-UHW praised its own efforts to raise the minimum wage for health care workers exhausted by the pandemic but did not answer questions about its alliance with the hospital group. Before emerging as allies this week, the two groups were engaged in a fierce battle over wage procedures in several Los Angeles County cities.

“You’re gambling people’s lives with this agreement,” said Chuck Edelson, a spokesperson for the California Nurses Union. “Our commitment to public safety and not trading it for a cash deal benefits one organization in the first place.”

Current law requires that by 2030, every hospital will be able to operate after Big One. Hospitals estimate these upgrades will cost $100 billion, a tab they say will likely lead to statewide shutdowns.

Last year in private negotiations at the state Capitol, Governor Gavin Newsom’s office supported the Hospital Association’s proposal to delay seismic updates, according to multiple sources involved in the discussions and were not authorized to speak at the time. On Thursday, Newsom’s office declined to comment on the latest proposal.

The attempt to strike a deal last year came at the same time as a 6.0-magnitude earthquake in northern California. After Democratic legislative leaders made it clear that any change in seismic standards needed the support of labor unions, the proposal failed.

This week, action groups attacked both the hospital union’s latest attempt to reform earthquake standards and the union lent its name to the effort.

The state construction trade accounts for nearly half a million households statewide. “We owe it to them, and all Californians, to ensure the safety of health care workers and the hospitals that care for them,” said Erin Lehane, legislative director of the state’s Building and Construction Trade Board.

Almost all hospital buildings meet seismic standards under a 1994 law that aims to ensure that none of them collapse during a major earthquake. The law was passed after the Northridge earthquake that year, which caused extensive damage to hospitals.

Under the same law, a higher standard had to be achieved – that hospitals not only remain in place, but be able to function after a major earthquake – by 2030.

Nearly three decades later, nearly two-thirds of California’s hospitals have not met the 2030 requirements, according to the Hospital Association.

“This is negligence on their part,” said Kathy Kennedy, a registered nurse and president of the California Nurses Association. “This has been brought to their attention for many years. They need to prioritize and put funding into the infrastructure. They can do that.”

In a draft of the new proposal obtained by The Times, California Hospital Assn. It is seeking a seven-year delay to the 2030 standards. In addition, the proposal would limit standards for hospital buildings that provide emergency services and allow rural hospitals that are showing financial difficulty to get additional exemptions from the extended schedule.

Under the same proposal, the minimum wage for health care workers would be raised to between $19 and $24 an hour starting Jan. 1, with the highest wage paid to workers in counties classified as urban or semi-urban. Wages will increase by $1 an hour in 2024, bringing the minimum hourly wages for some workers to $25.

Health care workers in dialysis clinics will also be eligible for the increases. SEIU-UHW has been in a long-running battle with the deep-pocketed dialysis industry, as the union pushed for control measures that were rejected at the polls. The union has another dialysis measure, Proposition 29, in its November ballot.

said Jacob Paitel, a spokesperson for the California Board of Dialysis.

SEIU-UHW has advocated minimum wage measures in Los Angeles, Long Beach and eight other cities in Los Angeles County that would increase wages to $25 an hour. The measures, which the Hospital Association is fighting, apply to workers in private hospitals and dialysis clinics, as well as other health facilities linked to private hospitals.

In June, Los Angeles officials agreed to a wage increase, saying it was needed to retain workers who felt undervalued after enduring the COVID-19 pandemic. The Los Angeles scale covers a range of employees, including cleaners, nursing assistants, security guards, and clerical workers.

Hospital groups responded by launching a campaign to block the wage requirement, collecting signatures to force city council to either repeal it or put it before voters. “No to the Los Angeles Campaign to Measure Unequal Pay,” a group funded by the California Hospital in Assn, said the group. , this month it handed over 88,000 signatures in support of referendum efforts.

Los Angeles officials suspended the wage bill while checking whether opponents had obtained 40,717 required valid signatures.

Hospitals are fighting similar measures in other cities in Los Angeles County, including Downey, where they have also handed out signatures seeking a referendum. Local hospitals and their associations, including California Assn Hospital, raised. , sued the City of Los Angeles over the Wage Act, arguing that it arbitrarily awarded higher wages depending on where a person worked. They also argued that the costs of increasing wages might financially jeopardize some hospitals.

Times staff writers Taryn Luna and Emily Albert Reyes contributed to this report.

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