Dive Brief:
- A $15 minimum wage agreement was recently reached between Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth and the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. The hospital also agreed to increase the minimum wage by 8.5% over the next three years to $16.08 an hour by 2019.
- Additional provisions of the contract include health insurance, education and training benefits, and salary upgrades for 300 workers.
- Negotiations had been ongoing since September when the hospital's contract with the union members expired.
Dive Insight:
The Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has already agreed to a $15 minimum wage and Boston Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center have also recently increased their minimum wage to $15.
Whether similar wage negotiations are being discussed at Beth Israel's Milton and Needham locations remains unclear. The 1199 SEIU workers have been pushing for a $15 minimum wage at hospitals across the state.
Other healthcare providers are boosting the minimum wage for workers to $15, such as UPMC. California recently approved a bill to increase the state's minimum wage to $15 by 2022. Hospitals need to consider how to pay for wage increases much like other business, as previously reported by Healthcare Dive. Although some experts said the wage increase would improve patient care, others caution the increase may upset other workers who don't receive an increase.