Every year, we work with state legislators to pass bills that support workers, and improve healthcare access and Healthcare Justice for California.  These bills were signed into law.

2022 Legislative Session

Healthcare Worker Staffing Stabilization Bonus

• AB 204: Health Omnibus Bill: Retention bonuses for health care workers: Full-time workers will receive a one-time bonus of $1,000. Full-time is defined as anyone who is either designated a full-time employee working onsite or who was paid for at least 400 in-person hours between July 29 and October 28, 2022. Part-time workers will receive a one-time bonus of $750. Part-time is defined as someone who is not designated a full-time employee and who was paid for between 100 and 400 in-person hours between July 29 and October 28, 2022. There are additional matching funds of up to $500 for healthcare workers who receive a bonus from their employer in calendar year 2022. Get the details.
• AB 204: Health Omnibus Bill: Clinic funding: $75 million secured for all FQHC clinic workers to receive a one-time bonus of $1000: All community clinic workers, or employees of a Federally Qualified Health Center, rural health centers, FQHC look-a-likes, Indian health centers and intermittent health centers, in California who are not in management or in supervisory positions will receive the retention bonus of $1000. Get the details.

COVID Protections

• SB 114 Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review. Employment: COVID-19: supplemental paid sick leave: Extends the COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave provisions that were extended earlier in 2022 and were set to expire on September 30, 2021, including: Reestablishing the COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave for employers who have more than 25 employees and reestablishing that a covered employee is entitled to COVID19 supplemental paid sick leave if the employee is unable to work or telework because they are in quarantine or isolation, were advised by a healthcare provider not to work, needs time to receive the vaccine, or is experiencing covid-19 symptoms. Get the details.

Access to Quality, Affordable Healthcare

• AB 1130 (Wood): California Health Care Quality and Affordability Act: Establishes the Office of Health Care Affordability within the California Department of Health Care Access and Information ). The goal of the newly established office is to find ways to control costs in healthcare.
• AB 1882 (R. Rivas): Hospitals: seismic safety: Requires owners of general acute care hospital buildings that are not compliant with the January 1, 2030, seismic safety requirement that they be capable of remaining operational following a major earthquake, to submit annual status updates to various entities, including any labor union that represents workers in a building that is not January 1, 2030 compliant; and requires hospitals to post a notice that the hospital is not in compliance in any lobby or waiting area of a hospital building that is not compliant with the January 1, 2030, seismic requirement.

Building the Workforce of the Future

• AB 2849 (Bonta): The Promote Ownership by Workers for Economic Recovery Act: Enacts the Promote Ownership by Workers for Economic Recovery (POWER) Act that establishes a panel, within state government, to conduct a study regarding the creation of an Association of Cooperative Labor Contractors for the purpose of facilitating the growth of democratically run high-road cooperative labor contractors. Also requires the study to be complete and publicly available by June 30, 2024. This will help healthcare worker cooperatives like AlliedUp.
• Expanding the Care Economy Workforce Package: Community Health Workers $300 million General Fund to recruit, train, and certify 25,000 new community health workers by 2025, in partnership with the Department of Health Care Access and Information and the Department of Health Care Services, with specialty certifications in areas that include climate health, homelessness, and dementia.High Road Training Program $135 million General Fund for training and career advancement programs for people with barriers to employment, in alignment with the Workforce Council for Healthcare Training priorities. Funding supports collaborations and training programs among community-based organizations, local workforce boards, labor unions, educational institutions, and employers to build partnerships and pathways into family-sustaining healthcare jobs.

  Comprehensive Nursing Initiative $100-175 million General Fund to increase the number of registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, certified nursing assistants, certified nurse midwives, certified medical assistants, family nurse practitioners, and other health professions.

  Expanding Social Workers $200 million General Fund to support social work training programs and provide stipends and scholarships to create a new pipeline for diverse social workers who cannot otherwise afford the financial or time investment required to complete full-time programs.

  English Learners Health Careers $130million one-time Proposition 98 General Fund through the Adult Education program to support, healthcare-focused vocational pathways for English language learners at multiple levels of English proficiency, to increase language and cultural diversity in these settings.

  Healthcare Workforce Advancement Fund $25 million General Fund for the Employment Training Panel to support job entry and career advancement for entry-level and other workers in health and human service settings

  Multilingual Health Initiative $60 million General Fund to expand scholarships and loan repayment programs in healthcare and social work for multilingual applicants, with the goal of increasing language and cultural competencies throughout the care workforce.

• SB 1436 (Roth): Respiratory Care Board Sunrise:  Extends until January 1, 2027, the provisions establishing the Respiratory Care Board, revises mandatory reporting requirements, and permits licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) to perform specified respiratory care services.

Reproductive Justice

• SB 1375 (Atkins): Nursing: nurse practitioners and nurse-midwives: abortion and practice standards: Expands training options for Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNMs) for purposes of performing abortion by aspiration techniques (AAT).
• SCA 10 (Atkins & Rendon): Constitutional Right to Abortion and Contraception: Enacts a constitutional amendment, expressly providing that the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.

Fair Housing

• AB 2011 (Wicks): Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022: Creates a ministerial, streamlined approval process for 100% affordable housing projects in commercial zones and for mixed-income housing projects along commercial corridors. The bill would also impose specified labor standards on those projects, including requirements that contractors pay prevailing wages, participate in apprenticeship programs, and make specified healthcare expenditures.

2021-2022 Legislative Session

AB 1204 (Wicks) Race & Healthcare Transparency Act requires healthcare providers to publicly post and submit to the state an annual report on health outcomes by racial, ethnic, and other demographic groups. The bill would also require these reports to include a plan to address any disparities identified, ensuring the data leads to improvements in care.

SB 95 (Skinner) COVID Sick Leave extension. Extended emergency paid sick days and paid family and medical leave protection for workers until September 30, 2021.

SB 2 (Bradford) Peace officers: certification – SB 2 creates a process through the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to investigate and decertify police officers who are unfit to serve due to serious misconduct, helping to ensure greater public safety and trust. This bill will limit the ability of rogue cops to continue reckless behavior and make it easier for families to seek justice.

SB 65 (Skinner) Maternal Care & Services “Momnibus Act” – SB 65 establishes a comprehensive program to improve maternal and infant outcomes throughout the state, especially in communities who experience higher maternal and infant mortality & morbidity rates. This includes tracking and reporting of maternal & infant deaths, increasing the number of trained certified nurse midwives, creating a workgroup on Medi-Cal coverage for doulas, and enhancing Cal WORKS benefits.

AB 26 (Holden) Duty to Intervene – AB 26 requires law enforcement officers to intercede if they witness excessive use of force by another officer, and to immediately report potential excessive force. It also disqualifies a person from being a peace officer if they have been found to have either used excessive force or to have failed to intercede.

Stopping Weakening of Seismic Safety Requirements – The California Hospital Association attempted to eliminate certain seismic safety standards and push back implementation of remaining seismic safety standards for hospitals that go into effect in 2030. SEIU-UHW took a strong stance against weakening standards, delaying timelines, or exempting departments from the 2030 standards.

2019-2020 Legislative Session

SB 275 Health Care and Essential Workers: personal protective equipment. Requires DPH to establish guidelines for the procurement, management, and distribution of PPE, taking into account, among other things, the amount of each type of PPE that would be required for all health care workers and essential workers in the state during a 90-day pandemic or other health emergency. (2020)

AB 685 COVID-19: imminent hazard to employees: exposure: notification: serious violations. Requires employers to notify all workers of a potential exposure to COVID-19 within one business day and to notify the local public health agency within 48 hours of outbreaks in certain worksites. (2020)

AB 290 Health care service plans and health insurance: third-party payments. Requires a health care service plan or an insurer that provides a policy of health insurance to accept payments from specified third-party entities, including an Indian tribe or a local, state, or federal government program. (2019)

SB 343 Health care data disclosure. Eliminates alternative reporting requirements for a plan or insurer that exclusively contracts with no more than 2 medical groups or a health facility that receives a preponderance of its revenue from associated comprehensive group practice prepayment health care service plans and would instead require those entities to report information consistent with any other health care service plan, health insurer, or health facility. (2019)

AB 1506 Police use of force. Creates a division within the Department of Justice to investigate use-of-force, review the use-of-force policies, and make recommendations upon the request of a law enforcement agency. (2019)

AB 1775 False reports and harassment. Makes it a crime to make a false report knowingly and recklessly to law enforcement that another person has committed, or is in the act of committing, a criminal act or is engaged in an activity requiring law enforcement intervention and increases the fines for harassing someone through a call or request to law enforcement. (2019)

The CA legislature passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed over 100 bills that improve California healthcare and conditions for healthcare workers in the 2019-2020 legislative session. Here is a full list of those bills: https://www.seiu-uhw.org/victorieslegislature/