About our movement

California's community clinics need help
Our community clinics have fallen into a crisis driven driven by understaffing, low pay, and sub-standard benefits for the essential workers keeping clinics running—all of which impacts timely access to care for our patients. California has made progress, but without improvements to our state’s safety net care we can’t fully deliver on the promise of providing access to healthcare for our vulnerable residents.
In 2022, we secured $70 million in recruitment and retention bonuses but we know that to address the long-standing problems facing our clinics, we have to continue to speak out and demand more for our patients and for the dedicated healthcare workers at our clinics.
A $25/hour statewide healthcare minimum wage
With the physical exhaustion and trauma of working during the pandemic we are seeing workers leaving clinic jobs for better opportunities. Last year, we introduced legislation to raise wages for clinic workers and in 2023, we’re joining together with healthcare workers from nursing homes, hospitals, and medical groups to stand up and speak out to pass SB 525 (Durazo). SB 525 would create the nation’s first statewide healthcare minimum wage of $25/hour to help solve the healthcare worker shortage.
Transparency and Accountability
Despite receiving hundreds of millions in public funding annually, there are few reporting requirements on how clinics use this funding to improve care or address ongoing workforce retention and recruitment challenges. SB 779 (Stern) ensures that California has publicly accessible and accurate data on how community clinics are addressing patient care and health equity.

Empowering Clinic Workers
Clinic workers understand the root of the problems that they and their patients face every day. Clinic workers are joining together in a union, demanding a seat at the table with clinic executives so that workers can have a say in the decisions that impact patient care, in addition to having the opportunity to bargain for decent pay and benefits.