The following update was compiled by Policy Director of the Labor Council, Caleb Ragan. Read below to see which IELC-sponsored bills were passed, denied, or dropped from session. All bills that have passed session now await for the Governor to either sign or veto.

The following IELC-sponsored bill were passed by the State Legislature and now await the Governor’s signature or veto:

• AB 288 (McKinnor): California Right to Organize Act: Even before the election, corporations challenged the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board, and those cases remain active in court. This bill will protect workers if they are denied the right to organize or the protection of the NLRA at the federal level. Co-sponsored with Teamsters.
• SB 578 (Smallwood-Cuevas): California Workplace Outreach Program: this bill will write CWOP into the Labor Code, marking it as an ongoing commitment to ensure that every working Californian can understand and assert their rights at work, and expand the scope to educate workers on civil rights and income supports for paid leave, disability, and unemployment.
• SB 7 (McNerney): No Robo-Bosses: This bill will require human oversight into the use of automated decision-making systems (ADS) for hiring, discipline, and firing to make sure the decisions that impact workers’ lives are made by a human, not a machine. Being heard for third reading on the Assembly Floor.
• SB 261 (Wahab): Increase Penalties for Wage Theft: Employers who fail to pay wage claim judgements face penalties that are not high enough to create a deterrent. This bill improves the ability of workers to get wage theft judgments paid by publishing transparent public information and tripling penalties for persistent nonpayment by employers.
• AB 1002 (Gabriel): Repeat Wage Theft Accountability: This bill seeks to protect workers from serious wage theft violations by allowing the California Department of Justice (DOJ) to seek the license revocation or suspension, or to put conditions on licenses, of contractors that have repeatedly violated wage theft laws.
• SB 627 (Weiner): No Secret Police Act: This bill would make it a misdemeanor for a law enforcement officer to wear any mask or personal disguise while interacting with the public in the performance of their duties, except as specified.
• SB 805 (Perez): No Vigilantes Act: This bill requires law enforcement officers to visibly display identification when performing their enforcement duties, and requires a law enforcement agency operating in California to maintain and publicly post a written policy on the visible identification of sworn personnel, among other changes.

The following IELC-sponsored bills were still under consideration til the end of the session but did not make it through the process and/or were pulled by the Author.

• AB 283 (Haney): Collective Bargaining for In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) Workers: This bill would allow In-Home Supportive Services providers and employers to negotiate their contracts and wages at a State level instead of at the county level.
• SB 787 (Mcnerney): Clean Energy Supply Chains: This bill proposes the creation of a Senior Counselor on Industrial Policy and Clean Energy Development within the California Energy Commission and an MOU among state agencies to coordinate state investment, regulation, and industry planning to bolster middle class, union supply chain and installation jobs.
• AB 1331 (Elhawary): Protect Workplace Privacy: This bill will prohibit the surveillance of workers, including by wearable devices or heat trackers, in private spaces such as bathrooms and changing rooms. It also requires surveillance tool to be disabled during off-duty hours and limited to use only when strictly necessary.
• SB 809 (Durazo): Construction Trucking Classification: This bill seeks to provide legal amnesty to construction industry employers who use truck-owner drivers but misclassify those drivers as independent contractors, provided the employers reclassify those truck owners as employees and properly compensate those employees under the law for their time and for the use of their equipment, through the long recognized “two-check” system.
• AB 881 (Petrie-Norris): Carbon Capture and Removal Program: This bill seeks to establish much-needed state safety regulations for the transportation of carbon dioxide (CO2) by pipeline, ensuring that California remains at the forefront of climate action while prioritizing public and environmental safety.
• AB 1234 (Ortega): Wage Theft Default Judgements: Employers who stall, challenge, or fail to respond to valid wage claims create backlogs that delay getting money owed to workers. This bill will help speed up the resolution of wage claims by requiring employer response to claims, penalizing bad faith delays, and allowing for default judgements when employers fail to appear or respond to claims

For more info contact Caleb at cragan@ielabor.org.