The Los Angeles City Council Unanimously voted to pass a $25 per hour minimum wage for private sector healthcare workers Wednesday.

The ordinance would extend to private sector workers in hospitals, integrated health systems and dialysis clinics.

We applaud the Los Angeles City Council for leading the way toward protecting public health and addressing a staffing shortage that threatens Angelenos' care, Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, said in a statement Wednesday. By ensuring healthcare workers earn a fair wage that reflects the vital work they do, Los Angeles can retain and attract the workers needed to ensure the quality of healthcare doesn't decline in the city.

Any workers in the sector not making at least $25 per hour will soon see a pay increase, on top of a shield from a reductions in hours and staffing services.

The Coalition of Health Care Workers and Providers fought against the ordinance, calling it inequitable, arbitrary and exclusionary of 90% of the health care work force.

The Los Angeles City Council's hasty adoption of this inequitable measure is unfair for workers, costly for patients and risky for Los Angeles, The Coalition of Health Care Workers and Providers said in a statement. The vast majority of health care workers in the city will be excluded by this discriminatory measure, as the wage standard only applies to workers at private hospitals and dialysis clinics, but completely excludes workers who do the exact same job at our city's public hospitals, community clinics, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), nursing homes, urgent care centers, and many other facilities.

The coalition also argued the ordinance would negatively affect underserved populations of the city and should have been put to a vote in the November elections.

The ordinance will now be sent to Mayor Eric Garcetti to sign into law, but a timeline for enforcement has not been announced, as of this writing.