The details of these two priority bills are below:

SB 616 (Gonzalez) – Paid Sick Days - OPPOSE
·       This bill would increase the requirement for employer-provided paid sick days from 3 days (or 24 hours) to 7 days (or 56 hours).

·       Paid sick leave has a significant impact on seasonal operations (such as food producing) as we are required to provide the same paid sick leave accrual even though we may have employees who are only employed for a few months during the year.

·       Furthermore, with no documentation requirement, we see some apparent abuse of paid sick leave by employees, particularly during our busiest time.  CLFP member data shows that use of paid sick leave spikes significantly towards the end of the season, when we need workers the most.

·       CLFP members cannot afford another steep increase in paid leave mandates on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in light of all of the other California paid leaves and benefits which employers are required to provide.

·       SB 616 also does not address existing problems with the law:

o   No documentation requirement (which leads to abuse)

o   Conflict with overlapping local ordinances

o   Recent court decision that opens the door to PAGA enforcement

·       CLFP opposes this bill.  If the Legislature is going to more than double the amount of paid sick leave, they should at least address some of the existing problems with the underlying law.

SB 553 (Cortese) – Workplace Violence Prevention
·       This bill would require all employers to adopt a workplace violence prevention program and comply with numerous other requirements.

·       While CLFP understands the serious nature of workplace violence, this bill takes the wrong approach.

·       This bill imposes a one-size-fits-all requirement on all employers by mandating a workplace violence prevention standard that was adopted for hospitals and other health care settings.

·       This bill ignores years of work by Cal/OSHA.  Cal/OSHA has been working on a general industry workplace violence regulation for several years and is nearing completion of that proposal.

·       This bill will create considerable costs for employers and will generate massive fines.

·       CLFP opposes this bill.  The Legislature should allow the Cal/OSHA process to continue and not simply require all employers in the state to follow a workplace violence prevention standard that was designed for hospitals.

Both bills are in the Senate Appropriations Committee.  The deadline to move bills out of the Appropriations Committee is September 1.

California League Of Food Producers