Novant Health on Wednesday announced it’s raising its minimum wage from $12.50 per hour to $15 per hour. The Winston-Salem-based health system said the change takes effect in January and is expected to benefit more than 2,000 team members, including nearly 1,300 in the Charlotte area.
“This update to our living wage represents a $4.3 million investment in our team members,” Carmen Canales, Novant Health’s senior vice president and chief human resources officer said in a press release.
The minimum wage in North Carolina and 15 other U.S. states is currently $7.25 per hour — the same as the federal minimum wage. No U.S. state had a $15 minimum wage as of Oct. 1, although the District of Columbia did, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The $7.25 minimum wage translated to a full year of work is $15,080, or 129% of the federal poverty line, according to “The State of Low-Wage Work in North Carolina,” a 2014 projectby the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
In recent years, there has been a growing movement to move to a $15 minimum wage across the United States. The activist group“Fight for $15” said on its website that it began in 2012 “when 200 fast-food workers walked off the job” in New York City. The group said now it is a “movement in over 300 cities on six continents.”
Novant’s minimum wage was last increased in 2018, when it was raised to $12.50, according to the company. In 2017, its minimum wage was $11 per hour.