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Alvin Mauricio Medina works three jobs six days a week to support his family as the sole provider for their Los Angeles household. He’s a certified nursing assistant with a dream to move up to a higher-paying position in health care.
“I’m trying to better myself, I’m trying to move on to being a registered nurse. But here in California, with the low wages that we have, either you work or you’re going to school,” he said.
Now 45, he has been working in health care for more than 20 years and makes less than $22 an hour. While his main job is at a hospital in Hollywood, he picks up shifts as a nurse assistant at other hospitals to provide for his husband, who is unable to work, and two kids.
He’s expecting to get a break come January, thanks to a law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month that creates a higher minimum wage for health care workers. The measure, which gradually raises the industry minimum wage to $25 an hour, had support from both unions and the lobbying group that represents California hospitals. But lawmakers passed the bill — and Newsom signed it — without a cost estimate.
The costs are beginning to come into focus now that the Newsom administration is releasing projections for how the wage hike could drive up the price of providing health care to Californians for government agencies. That figure, at least $4 billion...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...