Employees to get $17.50 minimum wage and $2,000 COVID bonus at Kansas City hospital
Saint Luke’s Health System will raise its minimum wage to $17.50 an hour and pay employees a $2,000 thank-you bonus for their work during the pandemic, hospital administrators announced Tuesday.
“There is no question 2020 and 2021 have not been what any of us expected or wanted,” president and CEO Dr. Melinda L. Estes said in a statement. “But in this time of hardship and crisis, our employees continue to do all they can to ensure our patients and community are cared for and protected.”
The $2,000 bonus will go to everyone on staff as of Dec. 1.
Employees are coming up on an Oct. 30 deadline to comply with mandated COVID-19 vaccinations. When the health system announced the mandate in August, it said about 65% of 12,000 employees were already vaccinated.
The hospital is also boosting leave benefits to make it easier for employees to take care of sick family members.
The higher minimum wage goes into effect with the first pay period next month, the hospital system said. Saint Luke’s officials said they were the first health care provider in Kansas City to raise its minimum pay to $15 an hour last November.
Others that raised their minimum base wages to at least $15 an hour since last fall include HCA Midwest Health, University Health (formerly Truman Medical Centers/University Health), North Kansas City Hospital and The University of Kansas Health System.
Employees will also receive a paid floating “Social Impact Day” next year to spend doing community service of their choice, creating the possibility of nearly 12,000 employees donating more than 96,000 hours in the community, hospital officials estimated.
Some hospitals and long-term care facilities have struggled to get employees to comply with vaccine mandates. The CEO of Scotland County Hospital in rural northeastern Missouri told CNN he won’t enforce the federal vaccine mandate because workers would quit if they were forced to get the shot.
“Our reality is we need staff to work. And in return for your working, we’re not going to ask you to get a vaccine mandate,” Dr. Randy Tobler told CNN.
“There were people in the hospital that freely shared that if the vaccine mandate happened on our account or on anyone else’s, they would not work here. That’s just something they weren’t going to put in their body.”
Last month, University Health — formerly Truman Medical Centers/University Health— announced that 39 employees had resigned rather than comply with the health system’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, less than 1% of workers there.
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 5:21 PM.
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