As local hospitals are gearing up to fight a recently enacted Los Angeles ordinance to raise the minimum wage they pay their workers to $25 an hour, one local health clinic operator has embraced the wage increase.

City of Commerce-based AltaMed Health Services Corp., which operates a network of 46 health clinics in underserved communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties, announced on June 27 that it had already raised its wage to $23 an hour and plans to increase it to $25 an hour by 2025. And this despite the fact that as a federally qualified healthcenter AltaMed appears to be exempt from the Los Angeles ordinance set to take effect next month.

“Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, our staff selflessly continued to serve the critical health needs of the communities where they live and now we are recognizing them with a living wage increase,” Cástulo de la Rocha, AltaMed’s chief executive, said in the organization’s announcement of the wage hike. “AltaMed employees are our greatest asset, and they deserve stability in their lives so that they can fulfill our mission to provide exceptional care to our patients,” he added.

Steep wage rise

AltaMed’s move stands in contrast to a coalition of local hospitals that is trying to halt the Los Angeles minimum wage increase, which was passed by the Los Angeles City Council on June 29 and signed into law by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on July 8.

The wage-hike proposal initially came before the Council as a ballot measure from the...

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