Will you get ‘premium pay’ for work in the pandemic? Here’s when Gavin Newsom has to decide
Gov. Gavin Newsom and California legislators will soon decide which California workers qualify for up to $25,000 in bonus pay funded by the federal government for working through the pandemic.
Unions are already staking claims on the cash, pushing to get their members covered. In other cases labor leaders are recommending other types of workers who they say deserve the money more.
The COVID-19 stimulus law signed by President Joe Biden gave each states a pot of money — in California’s case, $26 billion — to fund certain efforts to help with the pandemic. One of the ways state officials can choose to spend that money is by giving “premium pay” to workers they deem as essential to the operations of the state during the pandemic.
That premium pay would be capped at an extra $13 per hour, for a max of $25,000, for each worker who qualifies.
The money allocated to the state can also be used for other purposes: to directly respond to the pandemic and its negative economic impacts by providing assistance to households, small businesses and certain impacted industries; to address any reduction of government services that occurred during the pandemic; or to make investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.
Federal lawmakers kept a broad definition for which workers would be eligible for premium pay, saying it applied to “workers needed to maintain continuity of operations of essential critical infrastructure sectors and additional sectors as each Governor of a State or territory, or each Tribal government, may designate as critical to protect the health and well-being of the residents.”
That means it’s largely up to Newsom — and California legislators — to decide who gets the money.
Newsom has to send his revised budget plan to the Legislature by May 14, so he’ll have to make his decisions on which to include by the first week of May, according to H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance. The Legislature will then either approve or opt to change his revisions.
Prison, hospital workers seek bonuses
Some unions have already reached out to the governor, looking to get their members a piece of that payment.
Coby Pizzotti, spokesman for the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, said he’s reached out to the governor’s office to get about 7,000 mental and behavioral health professionals included in the premium pay. Psychiatric technicians are mental and behavioral health nurses, and CAPT represents those who treat inmates in prisons and patients in state hospitals.
“All of our members work for 24/7 facilities. There’s no telework involved. They treat their patients regardless of having COVID or not — they still have to provide those services,” Pizzotti said. “Patients still get placed on suicide watches, and they have to do one-on-one observations. It hasn’t stopped for us.”
The International Union of Operating Engineers plans to push for bonuses for about 13,000 state maintenance employees, HVAC workers and groundskeepers in upcoming negotiations with the governor’s office, said Brandy Johnson, a union representative.
“Our union members definitely deserve recognition for their essential contribution and work they do for the state of California … none of our workers have been able to telework, and they’ve weathered the storm of COVID. Several, unfortunately, have been impacted and died from COVID.”
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents about 28,000 state correctional officers, supports bonuses for them.
“Our members meet the qualifications of ‘eligible workers’ and they are certainly deserving,” union president Glen Stailey said in an emailed statement.
Teachers recommending others
But others, such as certain teacher unions, are urging Newsom to use the money elsewhere.
David Fisher, president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association, said the union is not advocating for any bonus pay from the state for teachers. The Sacramento City Unified School District is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal relief dollars during the pandemic.
Fisher said the union plans to push the district to put that money back in the classroom, by lowering class sizes and getting more school nurses, psychologists, counselors and other support staff and other health and safety measures. Teachers in the school district have been working remotely during the pandemic, a practice that will end in April when it switches to a hybrid learning model.
“We have negotiated protections that educators do not have to return to in-person instruction until they have had an opportunity to be fully vaccinated, along with other mitigations,” Fisher said. “Therefore, we think those additional premium pay dollars should be targeted to those employees, like our colleagues in nutritional and custodial services, and grocery store workers, health care workers, first responders, and others, who have been working without vaccinations.”
Some first responders aren’t sure whether they’ll push for the extra pay. Tim Edwards, president of the union that represents Cal Fire firefighters, said they hadn’t had those conversations yet.
“We’ll have those conversations later, but it’s too early to say whether we’ll push for that or not,” he said.
This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Will you get ‘premium pay’ for work in the pandemic? Here’s when Gavin Newsom has to decide."
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