January 3 marked the deadline for the legislature to pass bills introduced in 2017 out of the house in which they were first introduced. Several CLFP-opposed bills failed to meet this deadline and did not advance. The legislative deadline to introduce new bills in 2018 is February 16. CLFP will be reviewing these new bill proposals and developing positions on bills that have an impact on the food processing industry in California.

A major victory for CLFP and an employer coalition was the failed passage of AB 5 (Gonzalez), which would have burdened employers with a scheduling mandate that would have required employers to offer additional work hours to employees before hiring a new employee or contractor. It also would have exposed employers to multiple threats of costly litigation for technical violations that do not cause an employee any harm. The bill would have imposed an unreasonable document retention mandate on employers. AB 5 did not have sufficient votes to pass off the Assembly Floor and was thus not taken up by the author.
In another victory for CLFP, AB 319 (Stone) failed to move out of the Assembly before the January 31 deadline. This bill would have required tethered caps for single-use plastic beverage containers. In opposing AB 319, CLFP and a beverage coalition pointed out that the technology to design and utilize tethered caps for certain beverage products has not been developed for market. A tethered cap also creates challenges for California’s recycle goals and efforts. Current single-use bottles are 100% recyclable and move easily through the recycle chain. A tethered top would require small recyclers to make changes to their equipment at a significant expense.

CLFP opposed AB 889 (Stone), which also failed to move out of the Assembly. This bill would have unfairly leveraged California companies into costly settlements to avoid having to publicly disclose trade secret information based upon an unproven allegation that a product is defective.