UNC Health Care is pledging to increase pay for employees to a minimum of $15 per hour by July 2019.

A first pay jump will come on January 13, bringing all employees to at least $14 per hour. The bump to $15 will then come in July.

The increase will help to “attract and retain a talented workforce, and reinforce the organization’s reputation as a great place to work,” officials said in a release.

The increase in the minimum wage coupled with other hourly employee increases will bring higher paychecks to roughly 9,000 employees, the health care system noted in the announcement. UNC Health Care is allocating roughly $15 million annually to allow for the increase.

“We are committed to providing a competitive living wage to support our workforce,” UNC Health Care CEO Dr. Bill Roper said in a statement. “We are proud to employ the best people to fulfill our mission of caring for patients and their families, and offering a higher living wage is an important step we are able to take.”

The living wage increase will go to employees at the UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, UNC REX Healthcare in Raleigh and UNC Physicians Network across the Triangle.

There has been a growing movement – pushed locally by the Orange County Living Wage non-profit – for employers to pay their workers a living wage, which is calculated from a set of factors that result in a worker being able to “afford basic necessities without government assistance.”

UNC Health Care officials said this initiative is focused on the Triangle operations because of the area’s “higher cost of living, strong job market and competition for talented co-workers.” Discussions for a similar bump for the health care system’s 30,000 employees across the rest of the state “are currently underway.”

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